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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/alexandergreatmeOOwhee 



Ibeu'vS of tbe IRations 

EDITED BY 

Evelyn Kbbott, !fo.l\. 

RLLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 



FACTA DUCIS VIVENT OPEROSAQUE 
GLORIA RERUM. — OVID, IN LIVIAM 265. 
THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON 
FAME SHALL LIVE. 



(HI 



. 



8" 



ALEXANDER 



i 










HEAD OF ALEXANDER. 

OBVERSE OF ONE OF THE GOLD MEDALLIONS OF TARSUS. 




REVERSE OF ABOVE MEDALLIOC 



ALEXANDER 

i THE GREAT 

THE MERGING OF EAST AND WEST 
IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY 



BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 



PRESIDENT OP THE UNIVERSITY OK CALIFORNIA 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



NEW YORK 

T TWENTY-THIRD STREET 



LONDON 

24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 

&bz |\niciurbochcr frees 
1900 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

L it) racy of Congress;, 
Office of the 

Ft* 3 <i 1900 

,'sUr of Copyright* 



54435 



Copyright, 1900 

BY 

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 






SECOND COF*. 



\S~-b 







vI^VAAa V^li 


V«S 


© i 5. 


r press, Iftew l^orl; 







TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY TEACHER 

JEREMIAH LEWIS DIMAN 



1 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

PARENTS AND HOME, SS9S5^ B -C ... I 

CHAPTER II. 

BOYHOOD AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, 356- 

340 B.C 19 

CHAPTER III. 
THE HIGHER EDUCATION 48 

CHAPTER IV. 
THE APPRENTICESHIP, 340-336 B.C. . .64 

CHAPTER V. 
THE OLD GREECE, $$6 B.C 8l 

CHAPTER VI. 
OLD GREECE — ITS POLITICAL ORGANISATIONS, 

ZZ 6 b.c 98 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, 

404-338 B.C. 122 

v 



Contents. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

LAST DAYS OF THE OLD GREEK POLITICAL SYS- 
TEM, 404-355 B -C i3 8 

CHAPTER IX. 
ALEXANDER IN THRACE AND ILLYRIA, 336-335 B.C. 149 

CHAPTER X. 
ALEXANDER IN CENTRAL GREECE, 335 B.C. . . l66 

CHAPTER XI. 
ORIENT VS. OCCIDENT ...... l8o 

CHAPTER XII. 
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 187 

CHAPTER XIII. 
CARRYING THE WAR INTO ASIA, 334 B.C. . . 208 

CHAPTER XIV. 
IN LYDIA AND CARIA, 334 B.C. .... 227 

CHAPTER XV. 
LYCIA, PAMPHYLIA, PISIDIA, 334~333 B - C - • ■ 2 4 8 

CHAPTER XVI. 
FROM PHRYGIA TO CILICIA, 2>33 B -C - • • 266 

CHAPTER XVII. 
BATTLE OF ISSUS, ^33 B - C 2 ^° 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
FROM CILICIA TO SYRIA, 333~332 B.C. . . . 294 



Contents. 



vn 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

THE SIEGE OF TYRE, 332 B.C 3II 

CHAPTER XX. 
ALEXANDER IN EGYPT, 332-33 1 B.C. . . . 328 

CHAPTER XXI. 
VISIT TO THE TEMPLE OF AMMON, 332-331 B.C. . 344 

CHAPTER XXII. 
THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA, 331 B.C. . . 356 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FRUITS OF VICTORY: OCCUPATION OF PERSIA 

— DEATH OF DARIUS, 331-330 B.C. . . 369 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
IN AFGHANISTAN, 330-329 B.C 382 

CHAPTER XXV. 
IN BOKHARA AND TURKESTAN, 329-327 B.C. . 398 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
THE INVASION OF INDIA, 327-326 B.C. . . 415 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
THE BATTLE OF THE HYDASPES, 326 B.C. . . 433 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
COMPLETED CONQUEST OF THE PENJAB, 326-325 

B -C . -447 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
RETURN TO PERSIA, 325-324 B.C. . . . 463 



viii Contents. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

PAGE 

AT SUSA AND OPIS, 324 B.C. .... 473 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER, 323 B.C. . 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

head of Alexander * . . . Frontispiece 

[From one of the gold medallions of Tarsus.] 

MAP OF ANCIENT GREECE AND ASIA MINOR . . 12 

REVERSE OF HEAVY EUBCEAN OR SOLONIAN DEKA- 

DRACHM, SHOWING THE ATHENIAN OWL . . 22 

SILVER COIN OF PHILIP II. OF MACEDON (FATHER 

OF ALEXANDER) . . . • • .22 

[Head of the Olympian Zeus. Coin probably 
struck, as the horse of reverse indicates, in com- 
memoration of victory in the Olympian games.] 

TETRADRACHM OF ALEXANDER, BEARING THE HEAD 

OF HERCULES 2 2 

ARISTOTLE 3 6 

[After the statue in the Spada Palace, Rome.] 

MAP SHOWING ALEXANDRIA A CENTURY BEFORE 

. . . . 46 

. 70 

[Obverse of one of the gold medallions of Tarsus.] 



* See note on p. 



Illustrations. 



GOLD STATER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, THE 

HEAD BEING THAT OF ATHENE ... 78 

[From the original in the British Museum.] 
SILVER TETRADRACHM OF LYSIMACHUS (KING OF 

THRACE, B.C. 323-281) * .... 78 

[From the original in the British Museum.] 
SILVER COIN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT . . 78 

[Supposed to have been struck during his lifetime. 
Obverse, head of Hercules. Reverse, Zeus hold- 
ing the eagle, seated. From the original in the 
British Museum.] 

PHILIP II., FATHER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT . 82 

[One of the gold medallions of Tarsus. Obverse, 
the head of Philip II. Reverse, Victory in a 
quadriga.] 

TETRADRACHM WITH HEAD OF ALEXANDER THE 

GREAT WEARING THE LION-SKIN OF HERCULES. 88 

[Obverse and reverse. This extraordinarily per- 
fect coin is the property of Hon. Eben Alexan- 
der, formerly U. S. Minister to Greece.] 

MAP OF THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ERATOSTHENES. $8 

DEMOSTHENES . . . . . . . 120 

[From the statue in. the Vatican, Rome.] 
jESCHINES ........ 146 

[From the marble statue in the Boston Museum.] 

PART OF THORWALDSEN'S " TRIUMPH OF ALEX- 
V 

ander" 180 

[From a frieze in the Villa Carlotta, Lake Como, 
Italy.] 

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE ABOUT 500 B.C., AND THE EM- 
PIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 323 B.C. . 192 



* See note on p. xiv. 



Illustrations. xi 



ACROPOLIS OF SARDIS ...... 196 

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF THE GRANICUS AS AR- 
RANGED BY THE AUTHOR .... 220 

ALEXANDER AT THE BATTLE OF THE GRANICUS* . 224 
[From a statuette now in the National Museum, 
Naples.] 

HEAD OF ALEXANDER RONDANINI IN THE GLYPTO- 

THEK AT MUNICH f 228 

From Koepp's Ueber das Bildnes Alexanders des 
Grosseni\ 

MOSAIC OF THE BATTLE OF ISSUS (FROM POMPEIl) . 230 
HEAD OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT f 232 

[From a tetradrachm of Lysimachus.] 
FACE OF ALEXANDER f . . . . . . 238 

[From the Pompeian mosaic representing the Bat- 
tle of Issus. From Koepp's Ueber das Bildnes 
Alexanders des Grossen.] 

SCENE ON THE COAST OF ASIA MINOR, NEAR AN- 

AMOUR ........ 242 

THE GYGEAN LAKE AND THE PLACE OF THE THOU- 
SAND TOMBS, ASIA MINOR .... 246 

PLAIN OF ISSUS (PRESENT CONDITION) . . . 288 

[The ancient course of the Pinarus followed the 
river channel next to the north.] 

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF ISSUS, AS ARRANGED BY 

THE AUTHOR 290 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT f 322 

[From the bust in the Louvre.] 



* See note on p. xiv. 
f See note on p. xv. 



xii Illustrations 



PAGE 

BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT .... 350 

[From the British Museum.] 

battle of arbela 380 

Alexander's crossing of the hydaspes and 

battle with porus ..... 440 



NOTES TO ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Head of Alexander. (One of the gold medallions of Tarsus.) 

Reverse of medallion : Alexander and the Lion, after the statuary 
group by Lysippus, called Alexander's Hunt, in commemoration 
of a fact in Alexander's life. Alexander followed the example of 
Oriental monarchs in cultivating this exercise, and Lysippus that of 
Oriental artists in depicting it. 

Map showing Alexandria a century before and after 
Christ. 
This map, based on the map in Brockhaus's Conversations- 
Lexicon, showing Alexandria a century before and after Christ, 
which follows the plan of Mahmud Bey, shows also by the cross- 
and-dash lines the present wide extension, now thickly built upon, 
of the Heptastadium, which originally connected the mainland with 
Pharos Island. At the east end of the island is shown the site of 
the famous Pharos, or lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the 
world. The site of the ancient Pharos, after its destruction, was 
occupied by a fort. The breakwater extending on the right hand 
from the mainland to complete the "Great Harbour" no longer 
exists. 

Alexander the Great. (One of the gold medallions of Tarsus.) 

The reverse is the same as the medallion on frontispiece, which 
see. The obverse shows Alexander as a descendant of Hercules, 
wearing the lion's scalp. The Hercules figuring on the silver coins 
of Alexander as his ancestor is of the same type as this Tarsus 
Medallion and the Tyrian Hercules. In many specimens the resem- 

xiii 



xiv Notes to Illustrations. 

blance to Alexander is marked ; and the "Alexandre d' argent" so 
to speak, of Ptolemy, on which Alexander's head wears an elephant's 
scalp, is good evidence, in default of trustworthy literary traditions, 
that Alexander's contemporaries regarded the lion's-scalp profile of 
his own coins as the king's profile ; in fact, the Sidon sarcophagus 
confirms the ancient tradition that Macedonian kings wore the lion's 
scalp as a badge of their house and office. The lion's-scalp profile 
of the gold medallion of Tarsus would seem to confirm the portrait 
theory in regard to the silver coins. 

Magical virtues were ascribed to Alexander's portrait in the days 
of the Roman emperors. The presence of the medallion of Alex- 
ander Severus, with the Philip and Alexander medallions, would 
seem to indicate that the Roman emperor had given them, in reward 
for services, to the person in whose grave they were found at 
Tarsus. These invaluable medallions would appear to be older 
than the reign of Severus, but the script shows them to be later than 
Alexander himself. 

Silver Tetradrachm of Lysimachus (King of Thrace, b.c. 
323-281). 
Obverse : Head of Alexander the Great with Horns of Ammon, as 
the deified son of the god. The profile is supposed to be taken from 
the statue-portrait by Lysippus, or the gem-portrait by Pyrgoteles. 
Reverse : Pallas holding Victory. 

Alexander at the Battle of the Granicus. 

This bronze statuette was found in the middle of the eighteenth 
century at Herculaneum, and is now in the National Museum, 
Naples. A few ornaments of the bridle and collar are of silver in- 
crusted upon the dark bronze. This antique is almost certainly a 
copy after the life-size principal figure of an equestrian encounter, 
presumably ordered of Lysippus by Alexander himself in commem- 
oration of his own narrow escape in this battle. This group, set up 
at Dium, Macedonia, contained fifteen portraits of Macedonian 
champions. It was copied by Euthycrates of Sicyon, a son and 
pupil of Lysippus, and was afterward taken to Rome by Metellus 
Macedonicus. A badly mutilated bronze horse in the Museum of 
the Conservatori, Rome, has been conjecturally pronounced a rem- 
nant of the original group. The vigorous action of the present figure 
is repeated in a Smyrniot terra-cotta described by M. Reinach in the 



Notes to Illustrations. xv 

Melanges Graux. In the encounter at the ford of the Granicus, 
Alexander's helmet was slashed by a Persian scimitar, and he was 
forced to borrow a lance, his own being shattered. 

Head of Alexander Rondanini. 

The bust represents a youth from eighteen to twenty years of age, 
and may well be regarded as an authentic portrait of the Prince 
Alexander as he appeared at about the period of the battle of 
Chseronea (338 B.C.). It has, indeed, been argued with considerable 
probability that we have in this statue a copy of the gold-ivory 
statue which Leochares, after the battle of Chaeronea, was commis- 
sioned to make for the Philippeion at Olympia, as part of a group in 
which Philip was the central figure. 

Head of Alexander the Great. 

Lysimachus, King of Thrace (323-281 B.C.), was one of the suc- 
cessors of Alexander. As usual on these coins, Alexander is repre- 
sented with the Ammon horns, in his character as son of Jupiter 
Ammon and universal king. The coins of Lysimachus are of 
widely various artistic excellence, but they offer beyond a question 
the most accurate profile-portraits of Alexander, and the one here 
presented, published in Imhoof-Blumer's Portratkopfe, Taf. I, 
is one of the noblest products of the Greek mints. 

Face of Alexander. 

Though the face is elongated, as compared, for instance, with the 
coin portraits, the characteristic features of the " leonine" hair, the 
forehead, the full eye, and particularly the lips and chin are faith- 
fully preserved. 

Alexander the Great. (From the bust in the Louvre.) 

This marble, called the Herjnes Bust of Alexander, was dis- 
covered in 1795 on the Tiburtine estate of the Cavaliere d'Azara, 
afterward Spanish ambassador to France, and by him presented to 
Napoleon I. This bust, inscribed " Alexander, son of Philip (King 
of the Macedonians)," in Greek characters of the Augustan age, was 
long the only means of identifying any other portrait of the con- 
queror. It has been mutilated by long immersion in the wet soil, 
and has been subjected to modern restoration in places. 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 



CHAPTER I. 

PARENTS AND HOME. 
359-356 B.C. 

NO single personality, excepting the carpenter's 
son of Nazareth, has done so much to make 
the world of civilisation we live in what it is 
as Alexander of Macedon. He levelled the terrace 
upon which European history built. Whatever lay 
within the range of his conquests contributed its 
part to form that Mediterranean civilisation which, 
under Rome's administration, became the basis of 
European life. What lay beyond was as if on 
another planet. Alexander checked his eastward 
march at the Sutlej, and India and China were left 
in a world of their own, with their own mechanisms 
for man and society, their own theories of God and 
the world. Alexander's world, to which we all be- 
long, went on its own separate way until, in these 
latter days, a new greed of conquest, begotten of 



2 Alexander the Great. [359 B.C.- 

commercial ambition, promises at last to level the 
barriers which through the centuries have stood as 
monuments to the outmost stations of the Macedon- 
ian phalanx, and have divided the world of men in 
twain. 

The story of the great Macedonian's life, insepar- 
able as it is from history in its widest range, stands 
none the less in stubborn protest against that view 
of history which makes it a thing of thermometers 
and the rain-gauge, of rivers and mountains, weights 
and values, materials, tools, and machines. It is a 
history warm with the life-blood of a man. It is 
instinct with personality, and speaks in terms of the 
human will and the soul. History and biography 
blend. Events unfold in an order that conforms to 
the opening intelligence and forming will of per- 
sonality, and matter is the obedient tool of spirit. 
The story of the times must therefore be told, if 
truly told, in terms of a personal experience. When 
and where the personal Alexander was absent from 
the scene, history in those days either tarried or 
moved in eddies; the current was where he was. 
This will be excuse enough for making this narrative 
of a great historic period peculiarly the story of a 
man, and not merely of a conqueror. 

Plutarch says that King Philip of Macedonia, 
shortly after the capture of Potidaea, received three 
different pieces of good news. He learned that 
" Parmenion, his general, had overthrown the Illyr- 
ians in a great battle, that his race-horse had won 
the course at the Olympian games, and that his wife 
had given birth to Alexander. ' ' Another story tells 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home. 3 

how on the very night of the birth an ominous 
calamity fell upon Asia: the temple of the great 
Diana of the Ephesians went up in flames. So 
events tend to swarm together in history — at least, 
in the telling of history. The year was undoubtedly 
356 B.C., and the best combination of all the indi- 
cations we have makes the month October, though 
Plutarch, in deference to the horse-race, says it was 
July. 

Philip had been three years on the throne of 
Macedon. The year before he had occupied Amphi- 
polis, and so opened for his little state a breathing- 
place on the ^Egean ; at the same time he introduced 
it to the long struggle with Athens. Athens herself, 
two hundred miles off to the south, was in the midst 
of a war that was to cost her the most of her island 
empire in the ^Egean. This or the following year 
marked, too, the publication of Xenophon's pam- 
phlet On the Revenues, and of Isocrates's essay 
On the Peace. Demosthenes, twenty-eight years 
old, was just entering on his career as statesman and 
public orator. ^Eschines was thirty-four. Aris- 
totle, the future tutor of Alexander, was twenty- 
eight. Plato, seventy-one years old, had nine years 
more to live ; Xenophon had one, Isocrates eighteen. 
An old order for which Athens and Sparta had made 
the history was just dying out, and a new order, 
with new men and new motives, was coming in. 

The child whose destiny it was to give this new 
world its shape was born outside the pale of the 
older world, and in his blood joined the blood of 
two lines of ancient Northern kings. Alexander's 



4 Alexander the Great. [359 B.c.- 

mother was Olympias, the daughter of Neoptole- 
mus, King of Epirus, who traced his lineage back 
through a distinguished line to Neoptolemus, the 
son of the hero Achilles. So it was said, or, as 
Plutarch puts it, " confidently believed,' ' that Alex- 
ander was descended on his father's side from 
Hercules, through Caranus, and on his mother's 
from yEacus, through Neoptolemus. Plutarch does 
not even withhold from us a story of Philip's falling 
in love that constitutes a fair parallel to what we 
know of his prompitude and directness of action in 
other fields. " Philip is said to have fallen in love 
with Olympias at Samothrace, where they happened 
to be initiated together into a religious circle, he 
being a mere stripling, and she an orphan. And 
having obtained the consent of her brother Arym- 
bas, he. shortly married her." Refreshing as it is 
to read of a marriage for love in these old Greek 
times, it must be reported that the match was never 
a happy one. 

They were both persons of decided individuality, 
and in both the instinct of self-preservation was 
strongly developed. Both were preeminently am- 
bitious, aggressive, and energetic; but while Philip's 
ambition was guided by a cool, crafty sagacity, that 
of his Queen manifested itself rather in impetuous 
outbursts of almost barbaric emotion. In her joined 
a marvellous compound of the mother, the queen, 
the shrew, and the witch. The passionate ardour 
of her nature found its fullest expression in the wild 
ecstasies and crude superstitions of her native re- 
ligious rites. 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home. 5 

"Another account is," says Plutarch, "that all the 
women of this country, having always been addicted to 
the Orphic and the Dionysiac mystery-rites, imicated 
largely the practices of the Edonian and Thracian wo- 
men about Mount Haemus, and that Olympias, in her 
abnormal zeal to surround these states of trance and in- 
spiration with more barbaric dread, was wont in the 
sacred dances to have about her great tame serpents, 
which, sometimes creeping out of the ivy and the mystic 
fans, and sometimes winding themselves about the staffs 
and the chaplets which the women bore, presented a 
sight of horror to the men who beheld." 

While it was from his father that Alexander in- 
herited his sagacious insight into men and things, 
and his brilliant capacity for timely and determined 
action, it was to his mother that he undoubtedly 
owed that passionate warmth of nature which be- 
trayed itself not only in the furious outbursts of 
temper occasionally characteristic of him, but quite 
as much in a romantic fervour of attachment and 
love for friends, a delicate tenderness of sympathy 
for the weak, and a princely largeness and generos- 
ity of soul toward all, that made him so deeply be- 
loved of men and so enthusiastically followed. His 
deep religious sentiment, which, wherever he was, 
carried him beyond the limits of mere respect for 
the proprieties of form and mere regard for political 
expediencies, and held him at temple and oracle 
in awe before the mysteries of the great unseen, 
stamped him, too, as the son of Olympias. 

In Philip there predominated the characteristics 
which mark in modern times the practical politician. 



6 Alexander the Great. [359 B.C. 

He was sagacious and alert of mind. His eye fol- 
lowed sharply and unceasingly every turn of events 
that might yield him an advantage. The weakness, 
the embarrassment, the preoccupation, of his oppon- 
ent, he always made his opportunity. He was a 
keen judge of character, and adapted himself readily 
to those with whom he came in contact. He knew 
how to gratify the weaknesses, ambitions, lusts, and 
ideals of men, and chain them to his service. Few 
who came in contact with him failed to be captivated 
by him. He was perfectly unscrupulous as to the 
methods to be employed in attaining an end. 
Nothing of the sort ordinarily known as principles 
ever impeded his movement. He was an opportun- 
ist of the deepest dye. Flattery, promises, bene- 
ficence, cruelty, deceit, and gold he used when and 
where each would avail; but bribery was his most 
familiar tool. He allowed no one to reckon with 
him as a constant quantity. His ultimate plans and 
purposes were concealed from friends and foes alike. 
In announcing his decisions and proclaiming his 
views, he followed the ordinary politician's watch- 
word : " We will not cross the bridge till we come 
to it." As success was to him the only right, and 
availability the only justice, radical changes of atti- 
tude and plan in the very face of action involved no 
difficulty. They rather served his purpose, and were 
his wont. He remained, as he wished to remain, a 
puzzle to his foes, and a mystery to his friends. 

His character was full of apparent contradictions. 
Perhaps, after all, it was only his extraordinary 
versatility that was responsible for them. At one 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home. 



time he appears as a creature of passion enraged by 
anger or lust, again he is cool, deliberate, calculat- 
ing, when others are carried away with excitement 
or prejudice; now he is a half-savage, again he is a 
smooth, subtle, temperate Greek ; now he is pitilessly 
brutal, again he is generous and large-hearted ; now 
he gives himself, body and soul, to some petty aim 
of lust or envy, again he is the prophet and preacher 
of a national ideal. In everything he was, however, 
a strong individuality. His personality dominated 
every enterprise in which he was concerned. He 
was a natural leader of men. He could organise as 
well as lead. He not only made himself absolute 
master of Macedon, but he so organised its force 
that it became of permanent value and could be 
transmitted to his successor. His organising talent 
was, however, military rather than political. He 
lacked that fine sense for the civic and religious in- 
stincts of other peoples which developed in his son 
the capacity for founding empire as well as leading 
armies. And yet without him Alexander's achieve- 
ments would have been impossible. 

Philip's great permanent achievements are two: 
the first is the organisation of a power which Alex- 
ander was able, after him, to use for the founding of 
an empire ; the second is the formulation and practi- 
cal initiation of the idea of uniting Greece through 
a great national undertaking. These two are enough 
to set upon him the stamp of greatness. He was 
certainly great — great in personal force, in practical 
alertness, in organising talent, and in sagacious in- 
telligence. Theopompus says well: " Taking all 



8 Alexander the Great. [359 b.c- 

in all, Europe has never seen such a man as the 
son of Amyntas. " 

So much for the parents of Alexander. How 
truly he was their son the story of his life will tell. 
The improvement which he made upon their record, 
particularly in point of greater self-restraint, of 
higher and more ideal interests, and of nobler ideas 
of life and duty, this is to be traced, at least to 
some degree, to his excellent training and education. 

Alexander was born at Pella, the city which his 
father, in place of ancient ^Egae, had made the cap- 
ital of Macedonia. Hard by a vast swamp lake, and 
on the banks of the sluggish Ludias, it stood near 
the centre of the plain which formed the nucleus of 
the little kingdom. The sea, the modern Gulf of 
Saloniki, was twenty miles away. Twenty miles to 
the east or west or north brought one to the foot- 
hills of the highlands that raised their amphitheatre 
about the plain. One great river, the Axius, modern 
Vardar, came down through the northern hills and 
trav-ersed the plain. The Ludias was a lesser stream 
a little to the west. From the west, draining the 
mountain-locked plain of Elimea, came the Haliac- 
mon. Philip's ancestors from their old citadel at 
^Egae, near the modern Vodena, had long ruled the 
plain, and various tribes in the highlands behind 
had recognised a more or less stable allegiance to 
their power. Such were the Elimiotae of the Haliac- 
mon valley, the Lyncestae of the Erigon valley, and 
the Paeonians on the upper courses of the Axius. 
The congeries of tribes which made up this loosely 
jointed Macedonian state covered a territory, ex- 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home. g 

eluding Paeonia, about the size and shape of Con- 
necticut and Rhode Island. The sea-coast in 
Philip's early days was occupied by a fringe of 
Greek settlements, and the early history of Mace- 
donia is that of an inland state. Not until it 
acquired a sea-coast did it figure as an international 
quantity. 

The people themselves were a plain, hardy, peas- 
ant population, preserving the older conditions of 
life and the older institutions of the kingship and the 
tribal organisation — much, indeed, as they appear 
in the society of Homer's times. Only among the 
Spartans, the Molossians, and the Macedonians, 
says Aristotle, had the form of the ancient kingship 
survived, and only among the Macedonians the full 
exercise of its prerogatives. The consolidation of 
the classes into a strong opposition, which in the 
other states had first, in the form of an aristocratic 
opposition, throttled the kingship, and later, in the 
form of a democratic opposition, throttled the aris- 
tocracy, was in Macedonia prevented by the pre- 
dominance of peasant life and the persistence of 
tribal unity. The state consisted of tribes and 
clans, not divided into orders and classes. The 
kingship belonged always in one and the same 
family, but definite rules for the succession within 
the family seem not to have been fully established. 
Seniority alone was not enough to determine a se- 
lection among the princes. In the turmoils that 
almost certainly followed the death of a king, force, 
daring, and leadership often asserted, by a species 
of natural right, their superior claim. 



io Alexander the Great. [359 B.c- 

The larger landed proprietors owed to the king a 
military allegiance as vassals and companions-at- 
arms, and constituted a body known as the hetairoi 
(companions), not unlike the comitatus of the early 
Germans. The army consisted entirely of the free 
landholding peasantry. Mercenaries were unknown. 
It was this force that the stern discipline and careful 
organisation of Philip raised into the most terrible 
war-machine that ancient Greece had ever yet 
known, in firmness and energy the equal of the 
Spartan, in size, organisation, and suppleness im- 
measurably its superior. That the Macedonians 
were Greek by race there can be no longer any 
doubt. They were the northernmost fragments of 
the race left stranded behind the barriers of Olym- 
pus. They had not shared the historical experience 
of their kinsmen to the south, and had not been 
kneaded with the mass. If isolation from the 
^Egean had withheld them from progress in the arts 
of civilisation, still they had kept the freshness and 
purity of the Northern blood better than those who 
had mixed with the primitive populations of Greece 
and were sinking the old fair-haired, blue-eyed type of 
the Northmen in the dark-haired type of the South. 
It is the experience of history that force and will 
must be continually replenished from the North, 
and the Macedonians were only waiting for their 
turn. 

Their language, mere patois as it was, and never 
used, so far as we know, in written form, has left 
evidences of its Greek character in stray words that 
have crept into the glossaries, and from soldiers' 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home, 1 1 

lips into the common speech.* There exist, besides 
proper names, a large number of glosses in the 
lexicon of Hesychius and a considerable number of 
words that became incorporated into the common 
Greek of the Macedonian period. Thus, Berenice 
is known to be the Macedonian form corresponding 
to an Attic Pherenice, as Bilippos was the Mace- 
donian name of Philip. Correspondingly the Attic 
word ophrns (eyebrows) had its counterpart abrntes 
in Macedonian. It is evident that the dialect was 
regarded as so base a patois that even when Mace- 
don rose to world-power no attempt was made to 
elevate it into use as a literary language. The 
higher classes, presumably, all learned Attic Greek, 
much as the children in the Tyrol to-day are taught 
Hochdeutsch, which is to them a half-foreign tongue. 
Plutarch reports that Attic Greek was the medium 
of intercourse at Philip's court. It is a significant 
fact that while as late as 214 B.C., a Macedonian 
king, Philip V., is known to have issued a proclama- 
tion to a Thessalian community in bilingual form, 
i. e., in Thessalian Greek and common Greek, there 
is no likelihood that any such use of the Macedonian 
dialect was ever attempted. Macedonian was, how- 
ever, the common spoken language of the Mace- 
donian soldiery. Thus Plutarch f reports a scene 
in the camp before Eumenes's tent: " And when 
they saw him, they saluted him in the Macedonian 
dialect, and took up their shields, and, striking them 
with their pikes, gave a great shout." That Alex- 

* See A. Fick, Kuhri 's Zeitschrift, xxii., i^ff. 
\ Plutarch, Eumenes, ch. xiv. 



12 Alexander the Great. [359 B.C.- 

ander himself usually spoke Attic Greek may be in- 
ferred from the statement of Plutarch * that when 
he did speak in Macedonian it was interpreted by 
his attendants as indicating unusual excitement or 
perturbation. 

That the Macedonians were a rude, half-civilised 
people is sufficiently attested. Alexander in a 
speech attributed to him by Arrian f says to his 
army: 

" My father, Philip, found you a roving people, without 
fixed habitations and without resources, most of you clad 
in the skins of animals, pasturing a few sheep among the 
mountains, and to defend these, waging a luckless war- 
fare with the Illyrians, the Triballans, and the Thracians 
on your borders. But he gave you the soldier's cloak to 
replace the skins and led you down from the mountains 
into the plain, making you a worthy match in war against 
the barbarians on your frontier, so that you no longer 
trusted to the security of your strongholds so much as to 
your own personal valour for safety. He made you to 
dwell in cities and provided you with wholesome laws 
and institutions. Over those same barbarians, who be- 
fore had plundered you and carried off as booty both 
yourselves and your substance, he made you instead of 
slaves and underlings to be masters and lords." 

The warlike character also of the people is attested 
by Aristotle's % remark that " it was once the usage 
among the Macedonians that a man who had not 



* Plutarch, Alexande?-, ch. li. 

\ Arrian, Exped. Alex., vii., 9. 

% Aristotle, Politics, vii., 2, 6 (1324.3). 



te 



\ 



356 B.C.l Parents and Home. 13 

yet slain a foe should wear a cord about his body." 
They were passionately fond of the chase and given 
to the most barbarous excesses in strong drink, in 
which latter particular at least Philip, and, as some 
think, Alexander, too, proved themselves true sons 
of Macedonia. 

But none of these characteristics affords the least 
warrant for excluding them from the list of Greek 
tribes. Like the inhabitants of Epirus, who were 
also often classed as " barbarians," they represented 
the outer rim of the Greek race, while the Illyrians 
to the west of them were of another race, probably 
the same as the modern Albanians, and their lan- 
guage, as we know from an incident related by Poly- 
bius,*was totally unintelligible to the Macedonians. 

Rude people as the Macedonians were, we have 
no reason to think that the Greeks generally classed 
them as" barbarians." When Demosthenes seeks 
to arouse political antipathy against Philip by call- 
ing him and his people barbarians, we shall interpret 
his words as we do ante-election editorials, and not 
as a sober contribution to ethnology. Bitterest is 
his expression in a passage of the Third Philippic: 

Philip — a man who not only is no Greek, and no 
way akin to the Greeks, but is not even a barbarian 
from a respectable country — no, a pestilent fellow 
of Macedon, a country from which we never get 
even a decent slave." If this tirade contains any 
basis of fact, it is that the Macedonians were rarely 
found in slavery, a testimony, on the one hand, to 
their own manliness, and, on the other, to their 

* Polybius, xxviii., 8, 9. 



14 Alexander the Great, [359 B.c.~ 

general recognition as Greeks. There is no evidence 
that Demosthenes's detestation of the Macedonians 
was commonly shared by his Athenian countrymen, 
though the two peoples surely had very little in 
common. In institutions, customs, and culture, 
they represented the extreme contrast afforded 
within the limits of the Greek race. 

Whatever may have been the current opinions in 
Greece concerning the Macedonian people, there 
can be no doubt that their royal family had been 
for generations regarded with great respect. They 
claimed to be descended from the ancient royal 
family of Argos, a branch of which, tradition said, 
had in the early days of Grecian history taken refuge 
in the north. Though it is impossible for us to test 
the reliability of this tradition, or to determine 
whether the name borne by the family, the Argeadae, 
is to be regarded as evidence to the truth of the 
tradition, or merely as the deceptive cause of its 
origin, certain it is that it was generally accepted 
among the Greeks, and had received the most de- 
cisive official verification from the highest Greek 
tribunal. When Alexander, a Macedonian king of 
the earlier part of the fifth century (498-454 B.C.), 
presented himself as a competitor at the Olympian 
games, Herodotus says that the other" competitors 
undertook to exclude him, saying that barbarians 
had no right to enter the competition, but only 
Greeks. But when Alexander proved that he was 
an Argive, he was formally adjudged a Greek, and 
on participating in the race, he came off with the 
first prize." 



356 B.C.I Parents arid Home. 1 5 

It was this same king who, during the invasion of 
Xerxes, showed himself so firm a friend of the Greek 
cause as to win the title " Philhellene." The mem- 
ory of his action on this occasion became an heir- 
loom in his family. The espousal of Hellenic 
interests as against the power of Persia remained 
the policy and the ideal of his successors. It was 
left to his namesake, a century and a quarter after 
him, to realise the ideal in its fullest sense. How- 
ever the other Greek states might vacillate in alter- 
nately opposing Persia or paying court to her, 
according to the momentary advantage, the Mace- 
donian kings always remained firm in their hereditary 
aversion to the effeminate empire and civilisation of 
the East ; and in this we may find one of the strong- 
est grounds of their popularity with the Greeks at 
large, as it surely also gave a certain moral basis for 
the claims of their ambition to lead the united force 
of Hellenism against the East. 

Another family tradition that took its rise with 
Alexander the Philhellene, or perhaps even with his 
father, Amyntas (540-499), associated itself with the 
cultivation and patronage of the higher elements of 
Greek civilisation. It was a natural tribute which 
the lesser pays the greater, but it was none the less 
a credit to have discerned the greater. Alexander's 
eagerness to participate in the Olympian games was 
part of a general desire to be recognised by the 
Greeks. He showed himself highly sensitive to 
their opinions about him. He sought the acquaint- 
ance and society of their eminent men, and brought 
it about that Pindar, then the first literary name of 



1 6 Alexander the Great. [359 B.C.- 

Greece, should celebrate his Olympian victories in 
verse. 

The efforts to introduce Greek culture into Mace- 
donian society, which began with Alexander the 
Philhellene, were continued under his successors. 
History gives us no connected account — only stray 
hints, but they are broad enough to follow. Greek 
settlers were welcomed. Men eminent in letters 
and in art were induced to visit the country and re- 
side at court. Thus Alexander's immediate succes- 
sor, Perdiccas II. (454-413 B.C.), entertained at his 
court Melanippides, the dithyrambic poet of Melos, 
who was regarded as one of the foremost lyric com- 
posers of his day; and tradition, which was ever 
busy with the half-mythical career of Hippocrates, 
did not fail to report that the great physician had 
once been called to practise his art at the palace of 
the same king. 

In the reign of the next king, Archelaus (41 3-399), 
the Philhellenist tendency, which had become almost 
a craze of imitation, reached its climax, and by de- 
veloping a nationalist party drew after it a reaction. 
Archelaus sought to make his court a Weimar. 
Though Sophocles and Socrates declined his invita- 
tions, Euripides spent the last years of his life in 
Macedonia, dying there in 406. The tragedian 
Agathon, the epic poet Chcerilus, the musician and 
poet Timotheus, and the artist Zeuxis all resided 
there for longer or shorter periods, finding under the 
hospitable roof of the king a welcome refuge from 
the turmoils that the long course of the Pelopon- 
nesian war was bringing to the Greek states. Great 



356 B.C.] Parents and Home. 1 7 

progress was made in all the arts and practices of 
peaceful civilised life. Thucydides says of Arche- 
laus: " He built the fortresses now existing in the 
country, and built direct roads, and, among other 
things, regulated the military system with provision 
of horses, equipment, and the like, doing more 
than all the eight kings before him put together.' 

Though the progress of the country toward civil- 
isation was seriously retarded by the ten years of 
anarchy that followed this reign, and the various 
wars that intervened to disturb the succeeding 
reigns of Amyntas (389-369 B.C.), Alexander II. 
(369-368), Ptolemaeus (368-365), and Perdiccas III. 
(365-359), the trend of events was ever toward 
bringing the country into closer, though often 
hostile, contact with central Greece. 

It was an occurrence of no slight significance for 
the history of the land which he was afterward to 
rule when Philip, the son of Amyntas, was held 
three years (368-365) a hostage at Thebes — at a 
time, too, when Thebes, at the height of its politi- 
cal importance, was the leading military power of 
the day, and the home of Epaminondas, the greatest 
leader and military strategist that Greece had yet 
produced. The tendency of Macedonian politics 
for a century and a half before Philip had followed, 
as we have seen, the twofold inclination of the 
kings, first, to raise Macedonia to the rank of a 
Greek state and secure it participation in Hellenic 
affairs and Hellenic culture, and, second, to antago- 
nise orientalism as expressed in the power of Persia. 
With Philip the course of events brought it about 



1 8 Alexander the Great. [359-356 3. c. 

that these two inclinations naturally blended into 
one. After a peculiar combination of occurrences 
in the year 352 had given him a foothold in Thessaly 
and made him a party to the controversies of central 
Greece, he saw his way to a larger ambition, which 
combined all the ambitions of his predecessors, and 
more than fulfilled them. He and his people should 
become Greek in leading Greece, and in leading it 
against the East. 



CHAPTER II. 

BOYHOOD AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 
356-340 B.C. ^> 

PHILIP ascended the throne in 359 B.C. Three 
years later Alexander was born prince and 
heir. We have seen the soil and the root 
from which he sprang. All his life is true to its 
source. In fresh, wild vigour he is a son of Mace- 
don, in impulsive idealism the son of Olympias, in 
sagacity and organising talent the son of Philip. 
But he was born to a throne, and, in his father's 
foresight, to a greater throne than that of little 
landlocked Macedonia, with its shepherds and peas- 
ants and country squires. Philip doubtless prided 
himself on being a " self-made " man; but his boy 
was to have an education that no Greek could 
despise. 

While it would be evidently amiss in estimating 
the influence of Alexander's education upon his 
character to compare inherited traits as subtrahend 
against the finished product as a minuend, the data 
which we fortunately possess concerning his early 

19 



20 Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

training, and our knowledge of the ideas and system 
of his later teacher Aristotle, afford, when combined 
with the clear picture history has left us of our 
hero's personality, an opportunity unparalleled in 
all the story of olden time of seeing what education 
can do for a man. Let the plain story of his boy- 
hood yield its own lesson. 

As was usual in all well-to-do Greek families, 
Alexander was first committed to the care of a 
nurse. Her name was Lanice, probably the familiar 
form of Hellanice. The first six years of his life 
were spent under her care, and a feeling of attach- 
ment developed toward her that lasted throughout 
his life. " He loved her as a mother," says an 
ancient writer. One of her children, Proteas, whom 
she nursed and brought up in company with the 
young prince, remained in after life one of his most 
intimate associates. All her sons afterward gave 
their lives in battle for him, and her one brother, 
Clitus, who was also a faithful friend, and at 
Granicus rescued him from death, was killed by his 
hand in a pitiful quarrel at a drinking-bout, a deed 
which brought him instant regret and fearful re- 
morse. As he lay in his tears on the bed of repent- 
ance, the graphic account of Arrian tells how 

" he kept calling the name of Clitus, and the name of 
Lanice, Clitus's sister, who nursed and reared him — 
Lanice, the daughter of Dropides. ' Fair return I have 
made in manhood's years for thy nurture and care — 
thou who hast seen thy sons die fighting in my behalf ; 
and now I have slain thy brother with mine own hand ! ' ' 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 2 1 

During these first six years we have no reason to 
suppose that our young hero's education differed 
essentially from that of other Greeks. The methods 
of the nursery are usually those of plain tradition, 
and are the last strongholds to be reached by the 
innovations of any newfangled systems of education. 
He grew up in the retirement of the women's 
quarters, in the company of other children, and 
with the customary solace of top and hoop, puppet 
and riding-horse, cradle-songs and nurse's tales. Of 
men he saw little, least of all during those militant 
years of his father, Philip. He was, through and 
through, a mother's boy. To her he had the 
strongest attachment, and from her he inherited 
the predominating traits of his spiritual character. 

With the beginning of his seventh year a Greek 
boy of the better class was usually intrusted to the 
care of a special male servant, called the paidagogos, 
or pedagogue. He was usually a slave, not neces- 
sarily one of much education, but a trustworthy, 
respectable, and generally elderly person, capable 
of teaching boys their "manners" and keeping 
them out of mischief. He accompanied the boy 
wherever he went, attended him to school, carrying 
his cither, or little harp, his books, tablets, etc., and 
remained there in waiting until the schoolmaster, 
the didaskalos, was through with him. In Alexan- 
der's case more than this was done. The general 
oversight of his education was intrusted to a man of 
distinction ,and royal birth, one Leonidas, a relative 
of Alexander's mother, who, though he did not 
spurn the title " pedagogue " in so good a cause, 



22 Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

was properly known as " educator" or" professor." 
He was, in reality, what we should call the prince's 
tutor. The position of pedagogue proper was held 
by an Acharnanian named Lysimachus, a man whose 
witless mediocrity has been rescued from total ob- 
livion by one happy " classical allusion." " Be- 
cause," says Plutarch, " he named himself Phcenix, 
and Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus, he was 
esteemed and held the second rank [i. e.> among the 
educators of Alexander]." 

Leonidas was essentially a harsh, stern disciplin- 
arian. Alexander received under his tutelage an 
excellent physical education, and was trained to 
endure hardships and privations, and to abhor 
luxury. A passage in Plutarch's life of Alexander 
is in point here: 

" He was extremely temperate in eating and drinking, 
as is particularly well illustrated by what he said to Ada 
— the one whom he dignified with the title ' mother,' and 
established as Queen of Caria. She, as a friendly atten- 
tion, used, it seems, to send him daily not only all sorts 
of meats and cakes, but went so far, finally, as to send 
him the cleverest cooks and bakers she could find. 
These, however, Alexander said he had no use for. Bet- 
ter cooks he had already — those which his pedagogue 
Leonidas had given him ; namely,. as breakfast-cook one 
named All-night-tramp, and as a dinner-cook one Light- 
weight-breakfast. ' Why, sir,' said he, ' that man Leon- 
idas would go and unlock my chests where I kept my 
blankets and clothes, and look in them to see that my 
mother had not given me anything that I did not really 
need, or that conduced to luxury and indulgence." 




REVERSE OF HEAVY EUBOEAN OR 
SOLONIAN DEKADRACHM, SHOW- 
ING THE ATHENIAN OWL. 




SILVER COIN OF PHILIP II. OF MACEDON (FATHER OF ALEXANDER). 

HEAD OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS. COIN PROBABLY STRUCK, AS THE HORSE ON REVERSE 
INDICATES, IN COMMEMORATION OF VICTORY IN THE OLYMPIAN GAMES. 





TETRADRACHM OF ALEXANDER, BEARING THE HEAD OF HERCULES. 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 23 

Another reference to Leonidas (Plutarch, chap, 
xxv.) harmonises reasonably with the foregoing. 
It again represents the tutor as a rigid inspector of 
details, and gives to his sternness a complementary 
shade of the petty economical. This is the story { 

" As he [Alexander] was sending off to Olympias and 
Cleopatra and his friends great quantities of the booty 
he had taken [from the sack of Gaza], he sent along with 
it, for his pedagogue Leonidas, five hundred talents of 
frankincense and a hundred talents of myrrh, in memory 
of a boyish dream of his youth. For it so happened once 
at a sacrifice that, as Alexander seized both hands full of 
the incense and threw it upon the fire, Leonidas called 
to him, and said : ' Sometime, if you get to be master of 
the land of spices, you can throw incense on lavishly 
like this, but for the present be economical in the use of 
what you have.' So now Alexander took the occasion 
to write him : ' We send you frankincense and myrrh 
in abundance, so that you may make an end of econo- 
mising with the gods.' " 

We may do the old tutor an injustice in attribut- 
ing to him, on the basis of this incident alone, any- 
thing like smallness or meanness in character. The 
tendency of Alexander was naturally toward lavish- 
ness and recklessness. Leonidas sought, doubtless, 
to check this, and was remembered most distinctly 
by his former pupil in his favourite role of brakeman. 
And yet Leonidas cannot escape wholly the charge, 
which later opinion laid at his doors, of having car- 
ried his severity and martinetism too far, and of 
being thus in some measure responsible for certain 
faults, particularly of harshness, imperiousness, and 



24 Alexander the Great. [356 b.c - 

arbitrariness, which showed themselves later in the 
bearing and temper of his pupil. Philip early recog- 
nised that a character of such strength as Alexander's 
was not to be controlled and trained in the school 
of arbitrary authority. He needed guidance, and 
not authority. He must be convinced and led, not 
driven. Thus Plutarch says: 

" Philip recognised that while his was a nature hard to 
move when once he had set himself to resist, he could 
yet be led by reason to do what was right. So he always 
himself tried to influence him by argument rather than 
by command, and as he was unwilling to intrust the di- 
rection and training of his son to the teachers of music 
and the culture-studies, considering this to be a task of 
extraordinary importance and difficulty, or, as Sophocles 
has it, 'a job at once for many a bit and many a helm,' 
he sent for Aristotle, the most famous and learned of the 
philosophers, to come to him." 

It does not by any means necessarily follow from 
what Plutarch says, that Leonidas was dispossessed 
of his position as supervisor of the prince's educa- 
tion by the coming of Aristotle. He probably re- 
mained in at least nominal control, but it is certainly 
to be inferred from all that we hear about the later 
course of training that the all-important personal 
factor in it was Aristotle. The pedagogue proper, 
i. e., Lysimachus, undoubtedly continued to act in 
the function of personal attendant, and we hear of 
him as still in the company of Alexander during the 
campaign in Syria, and when the latter was over 
twenty-three years old. The story which Plutarch 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 25 

tells about him in the Vita illustrates not only his 
amiable eccentricity of temper, but also, at the same 
time, the tenderness, generosity, and unselfish loy- 
alty to friendship which were such marked features 
in Alexander's character. 

" During the progress of the siege of Tyre, on a foray- 
expedition which he made against the Arabs dwelling by 
Antilibanon, he came into great danger through his 
pedagogue Lysimachus. Lysimachus, namely, had in- 
sisted on following him everywhere, claiming that he was 
no less fit and no older than Homer's Phoenix. When 
now, on entering the mountain regions, they were obliged 
to leave their horses and go afoot, Lysimachus became 
exhausted and was unable to advance. The rest of the 
company was far in advance, but Alexander could not 
bring himself to leave his old friend there alone, with 
the night coming down and the enemy close at hand. 
So he stayed by him, and kept cheering him on and try- 
ing to help him forward, until, without its being noticed, 
he, with a few attendants, became separated from the 
army, and found himself obliged to bivouac there in the 
darkness and the bitter cold, and that, too, in a grimly 
disagreeable and dangerous position. After a while he 
descried at some distance from him various scattered 
camp-fires of the enemy. Relying upon his fleetness of 
foot, and with his usual fondness for encouraging his 
people by personal participation in toil and peril, he 
made a dash against the company at the nearest watch- 
fire. Two barbarians who who were sitting there by the 
fire he despatched with his knife, and then, seizing a fire- 
brand, made off with it to his own people. Then they 
built a great fire, so that some of the enemy were fright- 
ened and fled. Others who essayed to attack them they 



26 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

repulsed. Thus they spent the night in safety. This is 
the story as Chares tells it." 

To return now to the boy Alexander. We have 
good reason to justify the opinion of his father, 
Philip, that the training of such a fellow demanded 
the best cooperative steering endeavours of " many 
a bit and many a helm." He was not at all what 
is ordinarily called the " bad boy " — rather the con- 
trary. But he was restless, energetic, fearless, head- 
strong, and self-willed, though his self-will was that 
of an intelligent, inventive independence, rather 
than pure stubbornness. The famous story of the 
taming of Bucephalus contains a full body of doc- 
trine on this subject, and, as its accord with later 
developments in the character of Alexander is too 
unmistakable to admit of any doubt as to its au- 
thenticity, we give it in full as Plutarch tells it. 
From the context in which the narrative appears, 
we infer with reasonable certainty that Alexander 
at the time was about twelve years old. 

" Philonicus of Thessaly had offered to sell Philip his 
horse Bucephalus for thirteen talents. So they all went 
down into the plain to try the animal. He proved, 
however, to be balky and utterly useless. He would let 
no one mount him, and none of the attendants of Philip 
could make him hear to him, but he violently resisted 
them all. Philip, in his disgust, ordered the horse led 
away as being utterly wild and untrained. Whereat, 
Alexander, who was present, said : ' That is too good a 
horse for those men to spoil that way, simply because 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 27 

they have n't the skill or the grit to handle him right.' 
At first Philip paid no attention to him, but as he kept 
insisting on being heard, and seemed greatly disturbed 
about the matter, his father said to him : ' What do you 
mean by criticising your elders, as if you were wiser than 
they, or knew so much more about handling a horse than 
they do?' 'Well, this horse, anyway, I would handle 
better than anyone else, if they would give me a chance.' 
'In case you don't succeed,' rejoined his father, 'what 
penalty are you willing to pay for your freshness ? ' ' I '11 
pay, by Jove, the price of the horse ! ' Laughter greeted 
this answer, but after some bantering with his father 
about the money arrangements, he went straight to the 
horse, took him by the bridle, and turned him around 
toward the sun. This he did on the theory that the 
horse's fright was due to seeing his own shadow dance 
up and down on the ground before him. He then ran 
along by his side a while, patting and coaxing him, 
until, after a while, seeing he was full of fire and spirit, 
and impatient to go, he quietly threw off his coat, and 
swinging himself up, sat securely astride the horse. 
Then he guided him about for a while with the reins, 
without striking him or jerking at the bit. When now 
he saw that the horse was getting over his nervousness 
and was eager to gallop ahead, he let him go, driving 
him on with a sterner voice and with kicks of his foot. 
In the group of onlookers about Philip there prevailed, 
from the first, the silence of intensely anxious concern. 
But when the boy turned the horse and came galloping 
up to them with pride and joy in his face, they all burst 
out into a cheer. His father, they say, shed tears for 
very joy, and, as he dismounted, kissed him on the head, 
and said : ' My son, seek thee a kingdom suited to thy 
powers ; Macedonia is too strait for thee.' " 



28 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

Bucephalus became from this time the property 
and the inseparable companion of Alexander. He 
accompanied him on his campaigns, " sharing many 
toils and dangers with him," and was generally the 
horse ridden by him in battle. No one else was 
ever allowed to mount him, as Arrian says, " be- 
cause he deemed all other riders unworthy." He 
is reported to have been a magnificent black charger 
of extraordinary size, and to have been marked 
with a white spot on the forehead. 

Some thought his name " ox-head " to have been 
given him on account of this resemblance of his 
head to that of an ox. Others said it was because 
he was branded with the mark of an ox-head. This 
reminds us of the name Koppatias applied to the 
famous Corinthian horses, which are said to have 
been branded with the letter koppa (?), probably in 
allusion to the koppa as initial of the word Korinthos 
(Qorinthos) which always stood upon the Corinthian 
coins under the device of the horse Pegasus. 

Alexander's affection for the animal is illustrated 
by two stories, one told by Arrian (v., 19, 6), the 
other by Plutarch {Vita, ch. lxi.) as well as by Ar- 
rian. Arrian' s story is this: 

" This horse once disappeared from Alexander's hands 
in the country of the Uxians (a tribe of robbers east of 
Mesopotamia), whereupon he sent out a proclamation 
throughout the country, to the effect that if they did 
not bring him back his horse, all the Uxians would be 
put to death. In response to this proclamation the 
horse was brought back immediately. This shows how 
great was Alexander's interest in the horse, and also in- 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 29 

cidentally how great was the barbarians' dread of 
Alexander." 

Plutarch's story is as follows: 

" Shortly after the battle with Poros [the battle of the 
Hydaspes] Bucephalus died, as the vulgate report has it, 
while being treated for wounds he had received, but as 
Onesiscratus, however, says, worn out with old age. For 
he says he was thirty years old when he died. Alexan- 
der was overwhelmed with grief at his loss. It was for 
him as if he had lost an old companion and friend. So 
he founded a city on the Hydaspes, and named it in his 
honor Bucephala." 

From boyhood on, nothing is more characteristic 
of Alexander than his restless passion for reshaping 
and subduing. We shall very greatly misunderstand 
him if we attribute this to an empty desire for fame 
and glory. It was not the desire for fame, but the 
desire to act. It arose from the promptings of an 
active, ready will, that shrank from no responsi- 
bility, and never shunned the pains of decision. 
He bore no marks of indolence of will. Action was 
almost a mania with him. A naive remark of his 
boyhood shows how the child was father to the man. 

" Whenever news was brought of Philip's victories, the 
capture of a city or the winning of some great battle, he 
never seemed greatly rejoiced to hear it ; on the con- 
trary, he used to say to his play-fellows : ' Father will 
get everything in advance, boys ; he won't leave any 
great task for me to share with you.' . . . He delib- 
erately preferred as his inheritance, not treasures, not 
luxury and pleasures, but toils, wars, and ambitions." 



30 Alexander the Great. [356 b.c- 

By nature he was fervently passionate and im- 
pulsive. His attachments to his friends were strong. 
He loved warmly and loyally. He was often swept 
by storms of anger, though hatred was foreign to 
him. It was only a magnificent force of will that 
enabled him to hold rein upon his passions. The 
struggle for self-control began in his boyhood. 
" Even in boyhood," the ancient biographer says, 
" he showed a tendency to moderation and self- 
control, in that, though naturally violent and easily 
swayed by passion, he was not readily inflamed in 
the enjoyment of bodily pleasures, and handled 
them mildly." Self-subduing was only a mani- 
festation of the supreme passion for bringing his 
environment under the control of his personality ; he 
merely treated self as part of his environment. 
Appetites fared with him much as Bucephalus did. 

This greed of achieving early showed, however, 
its bent toward things political. 

" He had not," Plutarch says, " like his father, Philip, 
an undiscriminating fondness for all kinds of fame. 
Thus Philip, for instance, used to plume himself on his 
cleverness in oratory, as much as if he had been a pro- 
fessional rhetorician, and his chariot-race victories he 
commemorated on his coins. Alexander, however, when 
his companions were trying to find out whether he would 
be willing to compete in the foot-race at Olympia, for he 
was swift of foot, said : ' Yes, certainly, if I can have 
kings as antagonists.' " 

We should do Alexander great injustice if we 
interpreted this remark as monarchical snobbish^ 



340 B.C.I Elementary Education. 3 1 

ness. Alexander, our author implies, was no lover 
of fame in itself and for its own sake. The winning 
of a foot-race, for instance, would have little value 
for him, except he could win it from a prince, i. e., 
except as the victory could take on a political 
colour and assume a political meaning. Not that 
he felt it unbecoming to his station or beneath his 
dignity to contend with common men, but that a 
mere athletic victory would be to him only a sham 
victory, a meaningless achievement. This interpret- 
ation of our passage is supported not only by the 
context, but by all that we know else of the boy's 
character. 

It is in harmony with this earnestness of purpose, 
and the tendency of his ambition to concentrate 
itself upon a single aim, that we find him, while yet 
a stripling, profoundly interested, with a naively 
boyish seriousness, in everything which concerned 
the imperial dreams and plans of his house. Once 
when, in his father's absence, a body of special am- 
bassadors from the Persian Shah came to the capital, 
he is said to have attracted much remark by the 
skill with which he entertained them, and by the 
sober craft with which he exploited the opportunity 
of their presence. He showed them such distin- 
guished attention and kindness that he directly 
placed himself upon a confidential footing with 
them. The questions he asked them were, to their 
surprise, not about trifling topics such as a boy 
would be expected to be interested in, but 

" about the length of the roads, and the methods of in- 



32 Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

land travel ; about the Shah, and what sort of a man he 
was in a military way ; how strong the Persian army was, 
and what constituted the strength of their empire. With 
such queries, as well as such demeanour, he so aroused 
their admiration that they came to think that, after all, 
the cleverness of Philip, about which they had heard so 
much, counted but little in comparison with the energy 
and the nobility of purpose they discovered in his son." 

The life of Alexander affords an unusually satis- 
factory opportunity of measuring the influence of 
education upon character. Ancient history scarcely 
offers another such. Alexander's natural endow- 
ments of character, as we have already seen from 
the story of his boyhood, and shall further see in 
the unfolding of his later life, include certain traits 
so pronounced and well defined that there can be 
no mistake concerning them. The character of the 
natural man Alexander is well in evidence. On the 
other hand, we are afforded an unusually accurate 
means of gauging the method and spirit of his edu- 
cation through the circumstance that, from his thir- 
teenth year on, Aristotle was his tutor, and Aristotle's 
ideas about how to teach and why to teach and what 
to teach are better known than those of any one of 
the ancients who ever practised pedagogy. 

Alexander, especially in some of the tendencies 
of his later career, unquestionably offended seriously 
against the doctrine of his master, and many of his 
ideas, particularly regarding politics, were at vari- 
ance therewith. A superficial judgment might, 
therefore, pronounce that all evidence of Aristotle's 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 33 

influence was lacking in Alexander's career. Such 
a judgment fails, on the one hand, to take into 
sufficient account the abnormal conditions consti- 
tuted by Alexander's sudden and enormous success, 
and on the other to take in complete review the in- 
cidents of his life in the light of his natural instincts 
and of his power and opportunity. Wherever we 
see in him a high, imperious, fitful temper and a 
restless, energetic, selfish will curbing themselves to 
the rein of reason, reflection, and large humane con- 
siderations, there the influence of the teacher is to 
be discerned. 

Alexander was between twelve and thirteen years 
of age when Aristotle, then a man of forty or one- 
and-forty, took him in hand. Aristotle's birth- 
place, Stagira, was in Thrace, very near Macedonian 
soil, and his father, Nicomachus, had been the 
court physician of Amyntas, Alexander's grand- 
father. He was certainly, therefore, well enough 
known to Philip. There is a letter reported to us 
by Aulus Gellius {Noct. Attic, ix.) which purports 
to be Philip's announcement to Aristotle of the 
birth of his son : 

" Philip to Aristotle, greeting. Be it known that to 
me a son is born. I am thankful therefore to the gods, 
but not so much at the birth of the child as that he is 
born in thy time. For I hope that, trained and educated 
by thee, he will prove himself worthy of us and of the 
succession to the throne." 

It is altogether improbable that Aristotle in the 
year 356, when but twenty-eight years old, and nine 



34 Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

years before the death of his master, Plato, had at- 
tained a repute such as to justify an address like 
this. The letter rather belongs to the rhetorico- 
sophistic compositions of a later date, but testifies 
to the classical importance which the union of the 
two great names, Aristotle and Alexander, had as- 
sumed in the mind of antiquity. It was indeed a 
most significant fate that brought the two in this 
relation together. In the words of Zell : " The one 
had the power and the call to master and rule the 
world. The other had discovered and subjugated a 
new world for the human mind and for science." 

In recognition of Aristotle's services and as a 
species of higher remuneration therefor, Philip, to 
quote Plutarch's word's, " caused the city of the 
Stagirites, where Aristotle had been born, and 
which he [Philip] had laid waste (348-347 B.C.) to 
be rebuilt, and he recalled to their homes the citi- 
zens of the same who were living in banishment and 
slavery." 

As a seat for Aristotle's school the city of Mieza, 
in the Macedonian province of Emathia, southwest 
of the capital city Pella, near the boundaries of 
Thessaly, was selected, and there in the Grove of 
the Nymphs, hard by the town, the place where he 
taught, with its great chair of stone on which the 
master sat, and the shady paths in which he was 
wont, as in later years in the peripatoi of the Lyceum 
at Athens, to walk with his pupils, was shown as a 
" chief attraction " to visitors even in the days of 
Plutarch, five centuries later. 

Aristotle remained here in all about eight years, 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 35 

i. e., from 344~43 to 335 B.C. Shortly after Alexan- 
der ascended the throne (336 B.C.) Aristotle removed 
to Athens, and there, more or less aided by the 
favouring current of Macedonianism, established 
his famous school in the Lyceum in the eastern 
suburbs of Athens. Of his eight years in Macedonia 
not more than four could have been given to the 
immediate personal instruction of the prince. From 
his seventeenth year on, Alexander became too 
much absorbed in military and political interests to 
admit of further exclusive attention to study, but 
no particular date, prior to 336, marked an abrupt 
cessation of his relations to his tutor, whom he con- 
tinued to respect and heed, and whose instruction 
he doubtless from time to time still enjoyed. To 
his father, he said, he owed his life, to Aristotle the 
knowledge of how to live worthily. 

In Aristotle's school at Mieza, Alexander was by 
no means the sole pupil. Such an arrangement 
would have been inconsistent with one of the funda- 
mental principles of the master's pedagogic system, 
for he held that education, and particularly moral 
education was largely to be attained through per- 
sonal association, and that the cultivation of noble 
friendships among the young was a most potent 
means of forming in them cleanliness and healthi- 
ness of character. A considerable group of young 
men, composed in part, if not entirely, of noble- 
men's sons and princes, made up the school. We 
have no means of judging of the number further 
than that the language of those writers who allude 
to it certainly contains the implication that the 



36 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

number was not small. Among other allusions of 
the kind an anecdote preserved in Pseudo-Callis- 
thenes shows that Alexander was taught in company 
with others, and rather unconsciously illustrates the 
advantage of class instruction over private coaching 
in the incidental sharpening of wits by rivalry. The 
story runs as follows: 

" As Aristotle had with him once in his school a lot 
of boys, several of whom were sons of kings, he said to 
one of them : ' When, some day, you become king in 
your father's stead, what favor do you think you will 
show me, your teacher ? ' The boy replied,' You shall dine 
at my table, and I will make everyone show you honour 
and respect.' Then turning to another the teacher asked 
the same question, and this one answered, ' I will make 
you my chief treasurer, and will consult you as adviser 
in all that is brought me for decision.' Then he turned 
to Alexander with the question, ' And now, my son, 
what do you propose to do with me, your old teacher, 
when you come to sit upon the throne of your father, 
Philip ? ' And Alexander answered, ' What right have 
you to ask me such questions about that which the 
future has yet to bring ? As I have no assurance of 
the morrow, I can only say that, when the day and hour 
is come, then I will give you answer.' 'Well said,' ex- 
claimed the master ; ' well said, Alexander, world-mon- 
arch ! for thou wilt one day be the greatest king of all.' " 

Alexander's personal relations to his teacher in 
after life are unfortunately rendered somewhat ob- 
scure by the contradictory and to some extent evid- 
ently unauthentic statements of our authorities. 




ARISTOTLE. 

AFTER THE STATUE IN THE SPADA PALACE, ROME. 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 37 

When the invasion of Asia was begun, Aristotle 
evidently preferred the quiet of philosophic teach- 
ing at Athens to the turmoil of the camp, and 
declined his pupil's solicitations that he should ac- 
company him. For a time at least they remained 
in constant communication with each other, and a 
series of letters of doubtful authenticity constituting 
a supposed correspondence between them during 
the earlier years of the campaigns in Asia were 
known and much read in antiquity. Two of Aris- 
totle's existing tractates, viz., that On Colonisation t 
and that On the Monarchy were written as advice 
to Alexander during his campaigns in Asia, and 
were evidently influential in directing the policy of 
the conqueror. We have it on good authority, 
too, that he in various ways and at different times 
gave aid to Aristotle in the prosecution of his scien- 
tific work, having at one time given him no less 
a sum than eight hundred talents for the purchase 
of books and for defraying the expenses of his in- 
vestigations connected with the preparation of his 
work on zoology. At another time he placed at his 
disposal the services of a thousand men throughout 
Asia and Greece with instructions to follow out the 
directions of Aristotle in collecting and reporting 
details concerning the life-conditions and habits of 
fishes, birds, beasts, and insects. 

These outlays, gigantic as they seem, were in 
reality not disproportionate to the difficulty of the 
work, and the vastness of Aristotle's undertaking, 
especially when we consider the absence of prior 
investigations, the vast stretches of country in- 



38 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

volved, and the difficulties of communication. 
Aristotle's work stands to-day as a monument and 
a voucher to the money and means afforded through 
the thankfulness of the pupil. In course of time, 
it appears that the two became in some way and to 
some extent estranged from each other. In the 
long separation, under radically different conditions, 
they naturally grew apart. The later tendencies of 
Alexander's life, especially his inclination to oriental 
manners, and his supposed assumption of divine 
honours, could not fail to be distasteful to his 
master, and on Alexander's part it became notice- 
able, as Plutarch puts it, that " his kindly disposi- 
tion toward Aristotle lost with time somewhat of its 
earlier heartiness and of its warmly affectionate 
character." 

Alexander's unfortunate experience with Callis- 
thenes, the nephew of Aristotle, undoubtedly helped 
to raise a barrier between them during the last few 
years of Alexander's life. This man, distinguished 
above all things for his tactless effrontery of speech 
and general lack of good sense, had accompanied 
Alexander on his campaigns in the character of 
chronicler. After having fallen from favour through 
his exquisite obnoxiousness, he was discovered in 
complicity with a treasonable plot and died in im- 
prisonment, 327 B.C. It is impossible that Aristotle 
should have been greatly surprised at his fate, for 
he had himself warned him earlier that his tongue 
would some day be the ruin of him, but some of the 
historians would have us believe that Alexander ex- 
tended his suspicion of Callisthenes to his uncle. 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 39 

This is however highly improbable. We have no 
reason to believe that Alexander ever entertained 
any positive suspicion or even dislike of his old 
teacher, but the fact that Alexander had taken up 
with Callisthenes on Aristotle's recommendation un- 
avoidably threw some of the responsibility for his 
conduct upon his uncle. 

That Aristotle avvays stood in some sense under 
the protection of royal favour, even though in the 
last years it came to him mostly through the per- 
sonal friendship of Antipater, is shown by the fact 
that after the death of Alexander he was forced to 
quit Athens on the distinct ground that he was a 
Macedonian favourite. 

Having thus reviewed the history of Alexander's 
relations to the great philosopher, it remains for us 
now to gain some impression of the nature of the 
instruction which he received from him. In the 
absence of connected statements on the subject in 
the biographers and historians, we are left to recon- 
struct a picture of it out of occasional allusions, out 
of our knowledge of Alexander's literary and scien- 
tific interests in his later life, and, best of all, out of 
the well-known pedagogical as well as scientific 
ideas of the master himself. 

Before coming under Aristotle's influence, the 
young prince had evidently learned what by that 
age a boy had usually learned from the ordinary 
grammatist and paidotribe, i. e., he could read and 
write, could draw a little, had some knowledge of 
the flute and harp, and had been trained in the 
usual physical exercises. In regard to all these 



4<d Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

branches, however, the influence of Aristotle upon 
the later views of his pupil can be more or less dis- 
tinctly traced, and we cannot afford to pass them 
by without at least a cursory glance. 

First of all, in the department of athletics and 
gymnastics we know that Alexander had, as a 
youth, attained no ordinary proficiency. He was, 
as Plutarch tells us in connection with the story of 
his being urged to compete at the Olympic games, 
eminently " swift of foot." He knew also that he 
was praised as an extraordinarily skilful ball-player, 
and was herein the peer of the famous Aristonicus, 
of Carystus, whose prowess as ball-player won him 
the Athenian citizenship and the honor of a statue 
at Athens. 

During his campaigns in Asia he lost no oppor- 
tunity to indulge in healthful exercise, as Plutarch 
tells us in the Vita (ch. xxiii.): 

" If he was on a march which did not require haste, he 
would exercise himself on the way, either in shooting or 
in mounting and alighting from a chariot at full speed. 
He often diverted himself, too, with fox-hunting and 
fowling, as we learn from his journals." 

The incident, finally, of the breaking of Buceph- 
alus, already alluded to, joins with other things to 
show how thoroughly ready and robust he was in 
all that pertains to the sports of outdoor life. In 
spite of all this, his aversion to athletics for its own 
sake, as proved by his dislike of the professional 
athlete, and as shown, for instance, in his ironical 
remark when, at Miletus, the statues of the Olym- 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 41 

pian victors were pointed out to him : " Where were 
all these famous physiques at the time when the 
barbarians besieged your city ? " identifies him as 
the consistent pupil of the great philosopher. No 
one of the great Greek writers raises so persistent 
and emphatic protest as Aristotle against that mis- 
use of physical culture which attempts more than to 
make the body the ready and efficient tool of the 
individual's spiritual and intellectual activity. 

Alexander's attainments in the arts of drawing 
and painting seem at the least not to have exceeded 
the standard laid down in the pedagogical system of 
his master, who held that this discipline served in 
the ordinary liberal education no further purpose 
than to teach the pupil " to discriminate in the 
works of professional artists the more beautiful from 
the less." That he had, as might be expected of a 
liberally educated man, a decided interest in art is 
proven by a number of cases in which he showed 
especial favour to distinguished artists, as well as by 
the attention he always appears to have bestowed 
upon works of art ; — and that he also had some 
sound sense of discrimination may be perhaps in- 
ferred from Horace's report that he forbade any 
other than Apelles to portraiture him in colour or 
any other than Lysippus in bronze. With a weak- 
ness, however, not uncommon in potentates, he 
loved to indulge himself in art criticism, sometimes 
forgetting, it appears, that this class of judgments 
falls within the range of a different gratia dei to that 
which setteth up kings. It is a lasting honour to 
the profession that Apelles did not hesitate on occa- 



42 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

sions to call the imperial sciolist to order, as well as 
a credit to Alexander himself that he tolerated it. 
^Elian * tells the following story : 

" Alexander, on seeing the picture which Apelles 
painted of him at Ephesus, failed properly to recognise 
its excellence. His horse, however, when driven up 
before it, whinnied at the horse in the picture, as if it 
were a real one. Whereupon Apelles said, 'Your horse, 
O King, seems to be considerably more artistic than 
yourself ! ' " 

Pliny's story f is also a familiar one. He says 
that Alexander, who 

" used frequently to visit the atelier of Apelles, and while 
there was apt to discuss things freely and in a manner 
calculated to display his own ignorance, was politely ad- 
vised by the artist to keep silent, because he was making 
himself a laughing-stock for the apprentices who were 
scraping colours there." 

Alexander's literary training we should not expect 
would be neglected in the hands of the author of the 
Poetics. It evidently was not, as his later interest 
in literature, and particularly his enthusiasm for 
Homer shows. 

" He was also naturally fond of learning and an ex- 
tensive reader of books. The Iliad he thought, and 
indeed called, the vade-mecum of soldierly spirit, and he 
took with him a copy of it, the copy corrected by Aris- 
totle, which is called the casket-edition. Onesicritus 



* /Elian, Varia Historia, ii., cli. iii. 
f Pliny, Nat, Hist,, xxxv., 10, 85, 



340 B.c.J Elementally Education. 43 

tells us he used to lay it always under his pillow with his 
sword. And not only that, but when he wished for other 
books, and found them hard to procure in the upper 
provinces of Asia, he wrote to Harpalus for a supply. 
The latter sent him the works of Philistus and many of 
the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and ^Eschylus, as 
well as the dithyrambs of Telestes and Philoxenus " 
(Plutarch, Vit. ch. viii.). 

The mention of Euripides's name as first among 
the three tragedians, in contradiction of the chrono- 
logical order, can scarcely be an accident. Harpalus 
undoubtedly consulted carefully the tastes of the 
king in making the selection, and if that taste gave 
preference to Euripides, it would be only a natural 
echo of Aristotle's opinion that Euripides, with all 
his faults in the disposition of his material, is after 
all found to be the most tragic of poets. So the 
mention of ^Eschylus in the last place seems to 
correspond to Aristotle's neglect of him in the 
Poetics. Philoxenus is used by Aristotle, e. g., in 
the Politics * as a typical illustration of a dithyram- 
bic poet. Philistus was the historian of Sicily and 
the two tyrants, Dionysius the elder and Dionysius 
the younger, and was called by Cicero " a weak 
Thucydides." His subject-matter, dealing with 
strong personal government, as well as his political 
attitude favourable to such government (Dionysius 
calls him a flatterer of princes) probably determined 
Alexander's interest. 

Homer, however, was Alexander's chief delight. 



* Politics, viii., 7. 



44 Alexander the Great. [356 B.C.- 

Dion Chrysostomus who, in the second essay On the 
Kingship, has collected the traditional stories con- 
cerning Alexander's attitude toward Homer's works 
and made them the basis of a more or less imaginary 
conversation between Philip and Alexander, puts 
upon the latter's lips the expression*: " The 
Homeric poetry alone I find to be truly noble, 
grand, kingly; — and to this, I think, one who is to 
bear rule over men should devote his attention." 

Arrian's account of Alexander's visit to the tomb 
of Achilles contains the matter-of-fact statement f : 
" There is indeed a report that Alexander pro- 
nounced Achilles fortunate in obtaining Homer as 
the herald of his fame to posterity," or, as Plutarch 
has it, J " deemed him happy, that in life he had 
found a faithful friend [Patroclus] and in death a 
mighty herald." Achilles was, among Homer's 
characters, the one whom Alexander chose as his 
ideal, and he loved to claim him as a prototype. 
In his youthfulness, his elan, his impulsive moodi- 
ness, and in his mission as champion of Greekdom, 
he certainly was. The first suggestion of the simile 
came perhaps from Lysimachus, the old pedagogue, 
but it was a natural one, and however it came about, 
the mystical power of the parallelism merely exer- 
cised a strong influence upon the shaping of our 
hero's earlier life, and upon his plans and ideals 
throughout. 

The Iliad was to Alexander " the vade-mecum of 



* Dion Chrysostomus, De Regno, ii., p. 74 R. 
f Arrian, Anab., i., 12. 
% Plut., Vita Alex., chap. 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 45 

soldierly spirit," or the soldier's Bible, not only in 
the sense that its action and its types breathed the 
true spirit of the nobleman, the chieftain, and the 
warrior, but in the further sense, it appears, that he 
found in it a solace and guide among the perplexi- 
ties and uncertainties of a soldier's life. 

" And if what the Alexandrians say upon the authority 
of Heraclides be true, Homer proved no idler nor bad 
counsellor when he made the campaign with him. For 
they tell us that when Alexander had conquered Egypt, 
and was minded to build there a great Greek city called 
after his own na.ne, he had, on the advice of his en- 
gineers, selected a site, and was preparing to lay the 
foundations, when in the sleep of the night he saw a 
marvellous vision. It seemed to him that a man with 
grey hair and of venerable appearance came up to him 
and repeated the verses : 

' High o'er a gulfy sea the Pharian Isle 
Fronts the deep roar of disemboguing Nile.' 

— (Trsl. Pope.) 

" Alexander, upon this, straightway arose and went to 
Pharos, which at that time was an island lying a little 
above the Canobic mouth of the Nile, though now joined 
by a spit to the mainland. The moment he saw the 
extraordinary commodiousness of the situation, he gave 
orders to lay out there the plan of a city adapted to the 
terrain, adding, as he did so, ' Homer, along with his 
other remarkable qualities, is a wonderfully clever en- 
gineer.' " 

Alexander lost no occasion of testifying in season 
and out of season his admiration for the great epics, 



46 Alexander the Great. [356 B.c- 

and sometimes his enthusiasm smacks a little of 
youthful excess. Indeed, he might be accused of 
faddism, were not the unique position of Homer in 
antiquity, and the natural idealism of our hero 
amply taken into the account. On one occasion, 
when among the spoils of battle an elegantly 
fashioned jewel-case of Darius was brought to the 
king's tent, and the question had arisen what was 
to be done with it, Alexander proposed to use it as 
a receptacle for the manuscript of the Iliad, for no 
treasure he knew of was so worthy of it. Another 
incident is not to be interpreted straightway without 
recognising that Alexander possessed some sense 
of humour. We are told that once a messenger 
came galloping up to him, apparently the bearer of 
good tidings, for his face and his manner betrayed 
such an exuberance of joy, that the king exclaimed : 
" What good news is there, pray, for you to bring, 
worthy of such demonstrations as this ? It must be 
Homer has arisen from the dead! " 

Aristotle cannot be denied at least some of the 
credit for his pupil's interest. He taught him 
Homer, that we know, and probably we have in the 
Poetics a fair sample of some of the lectures that 
Alexander was likely to have heard in connection 
with his study of Homer and the tragedians. It 
appears from this that it was the aesthetic or artistic 
side rather than the moral or ethical which he em- 
phasised, and grammar we know he taught not as 
an end in itself but as a means to the interpretation 
solely. Neither emotional warmth nor a high de- 
gree of personal attractiveness or magnetism was to 



340 B.C.] Elementary Education. 47 

be expected of the matter-of-fact and rather cold- 
blooded savant-philosopher. He never had the 
reputation of being a very agreeable man. But he 
was in his best years ; he was far in advance of the 
best learning of his days; he was thinking and con- 
structing for himself, and he could not well help 
conveying to his pupils, however chilling his man- 
ner, an impression of that most genuine of all en- 
thusiasms, — that which attends the formation of 
new ideas and the uncovering of new truths. We 
cannot be sure how far Dion Chrysostomus may 
have relied on his imagination for his facts, but he 
cannot have been far out of the way when, in the 
essay alluded to just above, he represents Philip at 
the conclusion of his conversation with his son as 
exclaiming in admiration at what he had heard : 

" Verily not in vain have we honoured Aristotle and 
have allowed him to rebuild his native town ; for a man 
is deserving of highest reward who has given thee such 
doctrine concerning the duties and functions of kings, 
be it that he gave this through the interpretation of 
Homer or in any other way." 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HIGHER EDUCATION. 

THERE is no indication that Aristotle devoted 
any time to instructing his pupil in mathe- 
matics. In the list of Alexander's tutors 
which the Pseudo-Callisthenes gives, one Menecles 
the Peloponnesian is accredited with having taught 
him geometry. It is not improbable that all he 
acquired of mathematics he learned from this teacher, 
or from his first elementary teachers. There is also 
nothing in the facts which requires us to believe that 
he was instructed in the applications of mathematics ; 
for instance, in mechanics. His supervision of the 
siege-engines at Tyre and Gaza was the work of a 
leader and a man of common sense and inventive 
resources; it bears none of the traces of being the 
work, as has sometimes been held, of a trained 
mathematician and engineer. Professional engin- 
eers were there to carry out his ideas, and there is 
nothing in any of the accounts requiring us to sup- 
pose that Alexander himself supplied any of the 
technical knowledge necessary to the construction 
or operation of the machinery. 

48 



The Higher Education. 49 

While we have no direct warrant in tradition for 
a belief that natural history was included among the 
studies of Alexander, we can hardly escape the con- 
clusion that such must have been the case. With 
Aristotle himself it was hardly second to any other 
interest. How strong Alexander's interest was in 
the same studies may in the first place be seen from 
the opportunity and encouragement he gave the 
scientific men attached to his service in Asia. Thus, 
for instance, Aristobulus and Nearchus made ex- 
tensive collections of observations concerning the 
plant and animal life, the habits and customs and 
dress of the inhabitants, and the climate and geo- 
graphy of the countries far to the east, especially 
India; and their writings, though no longer extant, 
were amply cited by Arrian and Strabo. Aristobulus 
in fact served as Arrian's chief reliance, if not his 
most important source. 

Further proof of Alexander's interest in these 
studies we have in the ample subsidy which he gave 
to Aristotle's work on Animal History, and the as- 
sistance afforded him in collecting his data. As 
this was unquestionably done in recognition of serv- 
ices rendered him by his teacher, it seems natural 
to suppose that these services were especially re- 
membered in connection with these particular 
studies. 

Among other varied accomplishments Alexander 
had repute it appears as a medicine-man. The pos- 
session of some medical and therapeutic knowledge 
was an almost inevitable consequence of Aristotle's 
instruction in the physiology and botany of the day, 



50 Alexander the Great. 

and the distinction of having studied under him en- 
dowed one, like an old-fashioned college diploma, 
with universal learned right-of-way. Plutarch is 
right enough in suspecting Aristotle to be responsi- 
ble for it all. He says * : 

"Aristotle, I am inclined to think, implanted in Alex- 
ander a fondness above all else for the practice of medi- 
cine. For we find that he was interested not only in the 
theoretical side of the science, but that he used also to 
give practical service to his friends when they were ill, 
in that he would prescribe for them a particular diet as 
well as specific remedies. This you can learn from his 
letters." 

Form in thinking, or logic, and form in speaking, 
or rhetoric, are inseparably connected in Aristotle's 
system. Rhetoric is the art of putting things, or, to 
give his own definition more accurately, it is the 
faculty of finding out all the persuasive aspects 
which a subject naturally possesses. As such it is a 
mere phase of dialectics on the one hand and of 
ethics, a branch of politics, on the other. For its 
successful exercise it demands, first, the power of 
argumentative reasoning, and, second, a knowledge 
of human character and conditions, as well as of the 
nature and qualities of human emotion. f It was, 
in Aristotle's teaching of it, solely and wholly a 
practical art. Except in its applications to political 
or forensic use he displayed no interest in it, and 
virtually declined to discuss it. 

* Plutarch, Vita Alex., ch. viii. 
f Aristotle, Rhet., i., ch. ii. 



The Higher Education. 5 1 

Between him and Isocrates, to whom it became 
more and more a self-contained branch of aesthetics, 
there was a deep gulf fixed. Aristotle followed also 
in his pedagogical method altogether the practical 
course, and taught argumentation and expression 
only in connection with the discussion of concrete 
questions. 

" Thus," says Cicero in the De Oratore* " he joined 
study of the subject-matter with the practice of expres- 
tion. And this did not escape King Philip's attention; 
he appointed him his son's instructor, so that Alexander 
might learn from one and the same man the doctrine 
alike of acting and of speaking." 

The identification of the effects of such studies as 
these upon the manners and character of a man is 
not to be readily accomplished by the crude and 
ordinary tests. In Alexander's case it is peculiarly 
difficult and in view of his natural talents peculiarly 
uncertain. But certainly this much can be said : 
the records of his words, even if they do not posi- 
tively identify him as a pupil of Aristotle, still offer 
nothing that does in any wise discredit to his 
teacher's instruction. His speeches as we have 
them in Arrian's accounts are always brief, forcible, 
and to the point. They are distinguished by their 
power in making a convincing case out of the plain 
facts. He never prided himself on being an orator, 
and we never hear him spoken of as such by his con- 
temporaries. His dislike of all tricks and false 
ornamentation of speech is amply attested. In- 

* Cicero, De Orat., ,'iii., 35. 



52 Alexander the Great, 

deed, Plutarch,* in speaking of his singleness of 
purpose and the nobility of his ambition, contrasts 
him with Philip, his father, who among other things 
" plumed himself upon his eloquence as much as 
any sophist." 

Though Alexander was evidently averse to the 
formal arts of oratory, he was marked as an edu- 
cated man by that which seemed more than anything 
else to characterise in classical times the educated 
Greek gentleman, namely, ability to converse well. 
Cleverness in questioning and answering, adroitness 
in repartee, readiness in discussion, all these we find 
abundantly vouched for as among his virtues. Par- 
ticularly did his soul delight in the long talks by the 
after-dinner wine. 

" He was not so much addicted to wine," says Plutarch, 
" as he got the credit of being. This notion that he was 
a hard drinker arose from the length of time he spent at 
the table, but this he protracted not in drinking so much 
as in conversing, for with each cup he used to start some 
special topic for prolonged conversation and discussion 
— this of course, however, only when there was no busi- 
ness on hand." 

Fineness of touch in the use of expression and a 
refined consciousness of the value of words admit of 
ample illustration in his recorded sayings; thus 
when he distinguishes between his two strongly 
attached friends Hephaestion and Craterus, saying 
that the former is philalexandros (fond of Alexander) 
and the latter philobasileus (fond of the king) ; or 

* Plutarch, Vita Alex,, ch. lxiv. 



The Higher Education. 53 

when, after his colloquy with Diogenes, he rebukes 
his companions' sneers at the philosopher by the 
assertion: " If I were not Alexander, I should be 
Diogenes," meaning thereby that an Alexander reft 
of fortune and power would by virtue of his inde- 
pendence and of his abhorrence for conventionalities, 
be a Diogenes. 

His acquaintance with the methods and forms of 
dialectics, and a practised readiness which he showed 
in the current Greek sophistical banter stood him in 
good stead, for instance, on the occasion of his 
meeting with the Hindoo Gymnosophists (Brah- 
mans). His questions were cleverly adapted to put 
the men to their trumps, and though smacking 
strongly of the sophistical, served, as such things 
always did with the King, a practical purpose in 
giving him a knowledge of their craft. Ten of 
these distinguished for their neatness and address 
in answering or rather parrying questions were led 
before him, and he made it worth their while to 
show the best of their art by promising that the first 
who answered badly should lose his life. As judge 
in the matter he appointed the eldest of them. The 
questions and answers according to Plutarch's ac- 
count * were the following: 

"Alexander. Which, think you, are the more numer- 
ous, the living or the dead ? 

First Gymnosophist. The living, for the dead no 
longer exist. 

Alex. Which produces the greater monsters, the 
earth or the sea ? 



* Plutarch, Vita Alex., ch !xiv. 



54 Alexander the Great. 

Second Gymnos. The earth, for the sea is only a part 
of the earth. 

Alex. What is the most intelligent of living beings ? 

Third Gymnos. Man has not yet found out. 

Alex. Why did you stir up the tribe of the Sabbas 
to revolt ? 

Fourth Gymnos. Because I thought it better to live 
with honour than to die with honour. 

Alex. Which was created first, the night or the day ? 

Fifth Gymnos. The day by one day. 

Alex. How can one win the highest affection ? 

Sixth Gymnos. When he is the mightiest without 
inspiring fear. 

Alex. How can a man become a god ? 

Seventh Gymnos. By doing what it is impossible for 
a man to do. 

Alex. Which is mightier, life or death ? 

Eighth Gymnos. Life, which brings so much disaster 
in its train. 

Alex. How long ought a man to live ? 

Ninth Gymnos. So long as he does not believe that 
dying is better than living." 

Turning now to the umpire he called for his de- 
cision, and received the response that each had 
answered worse than the other. " Well, then," re- 
joined the king, " you shall be the first to die, so 
bad is your answer." '■ No, my King," answered 
the judge, " unless you will falsify your promise, 
for you said you would put to death the first one 
who answered badly." So the King dismissed them 
with presents. 

Even if we had not the definite assurances of an- 
cient writers on the subject, we should on a priori 



The Higher Education, 55 

grounds have little doubt that philosophical studies 
were included in the, prince's curriculum. Philo- 
sophy was in the current view the very capstone of a 
liberal education. It represented, too, the dominant 
interest in the mind of Aristotle, to whom sooner or 
later all subjects became philosophy. Ethics, poli- 
tics, metaphysics, as organised sciences, were vir- 
tually his creation. There never was a greedier 
collector of facts, but there never was one to whom 
their value was more directly associated with their 
place in a scheme of the whole of things. In all his 
teaching as in all his writing he was certainly first 
and foremost a philosopher. 

Ethics and politics were for him but two sides of 
the same science. They both sought to determine 
and teach the highest good in life, the one in the 
life of the individual, the other in the collective life 
of organised society, wherein the activity of the in- 
dividual finds its completest exercise and fullest 
satisfaction. The highest good is found in that 
happiness of life which arises from an activity of 
being that is true to the principles of virtue, or in 
accord with the nature of things. There exists be- 
tween intellectual excellence and moral excellence 
the essential difference that the former is called into 
being and developed mainly by instruction, the lat- 
ter by practice.* 

" The moral virtues we go on acquiring by first per- 
forming acts which involve them, just as is the case with 
the other arts. . . . Men come to be builders, for in- 



* Aristotle, Nicom, Ethics , ii., ch. i. 



56 Alexander the Great. 

stance, by building, and harp-players by playing the 
harp. Precisely so we become just in performing just 
actions, through acts of self-control we become self- 
controlled, through courageous acts, courageous. . . . 
Again, every type of excellence is formed or destroyed, 
as the case may be, from the same causes and by the 
same means, — art, too, in like manner with the rest. I 
mean it is by playing the harp that the good and the 
bad harp-players alike are formed ; so with builders, and 
all the rest. By building well men will become good 
builders, by building badly, bad ones." 

It is evident that a teacher holding such views as 
these would not have pinned extraordinary faith to 
instruction in the mere theory of ethics, though such 
instruction would doubtless serve to direct the 
activity and spur on the noble purposes of one 
whose life was already prepared by good training 
for the appreciation of moral distinctions. This he 
says emphatically in more than one connection; 
thus * : 

" In respect to moral action, not theories and views 
but action constitutes the real end. ... If doctrine 
were of itself sufficient to make men good, many and 
great would have been its rewards, as Theognis says, 
. . . but in point of fact, while it clearly has the power 
to guide and' stimulate young men of noble character, 
and to bring under the restraining influence of virtue any 
fine and really high-minded temperament, it is as clearly 
unable to lead the mass of men into upright and noble 
living. . . . Then as for reasoning and instruction, they, 
it is to be feared, will not avail at all, but it would seem 

* Aristotle, Nicom, Ethics, x., ch. ix. 



The Higher Education, 57 

that the mind of the pupil, like the soil in which seed is 
to thrive, must have been prepared in advance, by the 
tillage of habitual practice, for receiving and rejecting 
as it should." 

Aristotle therefore recommends private training 
as more likely to respect the individuality of the 
pupil. Lessons in the concrete addressed to the 
particular needs and circumstances of the individual 
characterised preeminently the ethical training re- 
commended by the master. He also esteemed it 
desirable for the teacher to be acquainted with the 
general principles of ethics as representing what is 
applicable to all men and as affording a background 
against which the better to judge the special case. 
Foremost among these general principles stands the 
recognition that the genius of virtuous conduct con- 
sists in the observance of the true mean between the 
too much and the too little. This may be said to 
be Aristotle's most reliable test for the quality of an 
act.* 

" First of all, we must observe that in all these matters 
of human action, the too little and the too much are 
alike ruinous, as we can see (to illustrate the spiritual by 
the natural) in the case of strength and health. Too 
much and too little exercise alike impair the strength, 
and too much meat and drink and too little, both alike 
destroy the health, but the fitting amount produces and 
preserves them. . . . So, too, the man who takes his fill 
of every pleasure and abstains from none becomes a 
profligate ; while he who shuns all, becomes a stolid 
and insusceptible 'hayseed.'" 

* Aristotle, Nicom. Ethics, ii. , ch. ii. 



58 Alexander the Great, 

Another test of the virtuousness of acts is their 
rationality or conformity to good sense. Thus 
virtue {arete") is defined*: " Virtue is a habit or 
permanent state of mind involving deliberate choices, 
conforming to the relative mean and determined by 
reason, i. e., as a man of practical good sense would 
determine it." What the young prince learned 
from his teacher concerning virtue was that it was 
freedom, that it was temperance, that it was sanity. 
We cannot expect his conduct to show that his edu- 
cation eradicated or abolished his natural impulses. 
There was nothing in Aristotle's system that looked 
toward a crushing out or overpowering of individu- 
ality ; quite the contrary : it was based upon the 
supremest regard for individuality, but sought to 
guide individual strength into the ways of sanity 
and self-control. 

Alexander was unquestionably a strong personal- 
ity. Passions, impulses, ambitions, will, were all in 
him at the highest tension. All the more distinctly 
in the record of his actions does the philosophic 
Alexander stand out in relief against the natural 
Alexander. Plutarch in his first essay on Luck vs. 
Worth in the Career of Alexander devotes a series of 
chapters to the influence of Aristotle's philosophic 
teachings upon the bent of his pupil's mind as illus- 
trated in his acts. Though, he says, the visible 
means with which he undertook his expedition 
against Asia seem small, in reality no one ever had 
at his disposal a better equipment than he. " For 
Philosophy had equipped him for the expedition 

* Aristotle, Nicom, Ethics, ii., ch. vi, 



The Higher Education. 59 

with loftiness of aspiration and largeness of view, 
keenness of mind, self-control, manliness; verily a 
fuller outfit was that he had of his teacher, Aristotle, 
than of his father, Philip." That he had published 
no works on logic or on the principles of philosophy, 
that he never strolled in the paths of the Lyceum 
or the Academy, these things do not, continues our 
author, deny him the epithet and character of a 
philosopher. This were possible only under the 
narrow definition which makes philosophy mere 
doctrine and not deed, for Alexander's deeds stamp 
him in the highest sense as a philosopher. Such 
are his endeavours toward educating in civilisation 
the barbarous peoples he conquered : 

" he taught the Hyrcanians to live in wedlock, and the 
Arachosians to till the fields; the Sogdianians he induced 
to support their fathers instead of killing them, the Per- 
sians to honour their mothers instead of wedding them; 
yea, the marvel of a philosophy, at whose hands the 
Hindoo bows down to the gods of Greece, and the 
Scythian buries his dead instead of eating them ! " 
" Plato wrote a book about the State, but could get no 
one to apply the doctrine of it. Alexander founded 
among barbarous peoples over seventy cities, spreading 
the seeds of Greek institutions throughout Asia, and 
overmastering its rude and beastlike life. Few read the 
laws of Plato ; thousands use those of Alexander." 

So, as he continues in substance, the Stoic Zeno 
taught the much-admired doctrine that mankind 
should not live in the separateness of cities and 
nations with their separate standards of justice, but 
that we should recognise all men as our clansmen 



6o Alexander the Great. 

and fellow-citizens united in a common life under a 
common system of order. This Zeno wrote out as 
the dream or the theory of a philosopher; it was, 
however, in the achievements of Alexander an actu- 
ality. He did not see fit to select one class of men 
as the sole recipients of his favours, and to treat 
others as beasts or plants, thus making his rule a 
succession of banishments and insurrections, but, 
conceiving his mission to be that of a god-sent medi- 
ator and harmoniser of all, he led whom he could, 
the rest by force he constrained, to join in coopera- 
tion toward a common end, and, 

" mixing as it were in one great loving-cup the various 
lives and standards of life and wedlocks and habits of 
life of all the peoples, taught them to regard the world 
as their fatherland and his camp as their refuge and cita- 
del, to esteem all good men as their kinsmen, and only 
the evil as strangers." 

The rhetorical ecstasies of Plutarch doubtless 
carry him and us somewhat far afield, but a very 
real basis they have after all. A strand of the phi- 
losophic runs through all the life of Alexander. 
Marks of its presence we see in the breadth of his 
sympathies, in the wider scope and higher purpose 
of his plans, as well as in his noble aversion to every 
form of pettiness and meanness, his efforts toward 
moderation and self-control, and his quickened moral 
sensitiveness. Alexander has been viewed by mod- 
ern historians far too much as conqueror, too little 
as a man. His acts have been interpreted as the 
acts of a ruthlessly ambitious conqueror. The bur- 



The Higher Education. 61 

den of doubt has therefore been against him. Men 
in estimating him, have seemed to forget his youth, 
the conditions, moral and political, and the times in 
which he lived, his sudden and unprecedented suc- 
cess, his turbulent life, and have judged his action 
in the light of the one thing supposed to be certainly 
known of him, viz., his greed of conquest. Eager 
to conquer he was indeed, because he was, above all 
things, eager to act and eager to achieve. Conquest 
in itself, however, was not his supreme aim. What 
he did must be judged as are the deeds of other 
men. He was singularly frank and transparent of 
character. Concerning his motives we need never 
be in doubt, provided we have a reliable tradition 
of his own account of an action. In his openness 
of soul, as in many other things, he stands in strong 
contrast with his father. He was not underhanded, 
nor given to " ways that are dark." 

We cannot undertake to review here in anticipa- 
tion of their chronological order the many incidents 
of his career which afford us an opportunity of form- 
ing an estimate concerning his moral ideals. Some 
of them have been very differently interpreted by 
different historians, and each would have to be care- 
fully discussed by itself. Those who hold the most 
unfavourable view arrive at it apparently through a 
distrust of our hero's frankness. Thus Niebuhr, 
who can find in Alexander no good thing, even goes 
so far as to accuse him of posing for effect, when he 
gave the wife and daughters of the conquered Darius 
his protection, instead of treating them as booty to 
his lusts, We have from independent sources ac- 



62 Alexander the Great. 

counts from different periods of his life showing the 
cleanliness of his relations to women. In youth he 
was, as we have already seen, a model of chastity. 
As he came to young manhood, we have it on the 
authority of Hieronymus that his parents tried in 
vain to interest him in a beautiful courtesan. Plu- 
tarch, in the Apophthegms, says it was certain young 
colleagues of his who sought to bring him into a liai- 
son with a married woman. This form of the story 
certainly relieves his parents of an odious charge, — 
yet neither version is out of accord with the possi- 
bilities of the times and the place. Plutarch's re- 
flections on his behaviour toward Darius's wife are 
in place here * : 

" They say Darius's was one of the fairest of queens, as 
was indeed Darius himself one of the tallest and hand- 
somest of men. Their daughters, too, much resembled 
them. But Alexander doubtless thought it more kingly 
to conquer himself than to subdue his enemies, and 
therefore never approached one of them, nor did he 
have relations to any other woman prior to his marriage, 
except Barsine. As for the other female captives, Alex- 
ander, when he saw them, tall and beautiful as they 
were, took no further notice of them than to say by way 
of jest, ' What eyesores these Persian women are ! ' 
Holding up before himself as a countercharm to their 
beauty the beauty of self-restraint and sobriety, he passed 
them by as so many statues." 

Conduct so at variance with the corrupt usages of 
the society in which he was reared, and so at vari- 

* Plutarch, Vita Alex., ch. xxi, 



The Higher Educatzoti. 6 



o 



ance with what we should expect of his own passion- 
ate, impulsive nature, must seek its explanation in 
his education. 

As the Prince left Aristotle's regular tutelage in 
his seventeenth year, it is hardly to be expected 
that the other branches of philosophical study 
should have been studied more than in general out- 
line. Still we have from Plutarch an explicit state- 
ment, that seems to assure metaphysics and perhaps 
theology a place in his thought. 

" Man's knowledge of God he esteemed to be dimly 
derived from observation of the movements of the soul 
when best freed, in enthusiasm or in sleep, from bondage 
to the body, and from observation of the firmament 
above us. His attitude toward the current faiths was 
not that of scepticism, for these were his data. They 
might be mere gropings, but they were not totally false. 
He showed no inclination to deny the validity in this 
sense of any human faiths, or to limit the possession of 
the oracles of God to any chosen tribe of people." 

Alexander's religious attitude will be found through- 
out to be a consistent application of, or deduction 
from, the doctrine of his teacher. His reverence 
for the religious beliefs and usages of all the varied 
peoples among whom he came befits well the pupil 
of one whose precept was "Never is higher reverence 
due than in matters which concern the gods," or, 
to quote it in the words of Seneca: " Egregie 
Aristoteles, nunquam nos verecundiores esse debere 
quam cum de diis agitur." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE APPRENTICESHIP. 
340-336 B.C. 

ALEXANDER had his first experience in pub- 
lic affairs in the year 340 B. c. In the summer 
of that year Philip set out on a famous enter- 
prise, the attack on Byzantium, and left his sixteen- 
year-old son, as Plutarch puts it, " in charge of 
affairs and of the seal." The son, it appears, made 
a better summer of it than his father; for while 
Philip utterly failed of his purpose, and, what is 
more, drew a war with Athens down upon his head, 
Alexander, not wrapping his seal in a napkin, tried 
his hand at disciplining the insubordination of a 
restless mountain tribe on the upper Strymon. He 
did it thoroughly. He took their chief town by 
storm, drove out the inhabitants, replaced them by 
loyalists, and named the place, after himself, Alex- 
andropolis. 

The year of our hero's initiation into practical 
affairs was a most critical one in international poli- 
tics. In order to start fairly with him, we must re- 

64 



340-336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship. 65 

view the political situation as it was when he first 
became a factor in it. The peace of Philocrates, con- 
cluded in June, 346 B.C., ended for the time Philip's 
struggle with Athens, and removed an important 
and long-standing check upon his activity. In July 
he passed Thermopylae, ended the Sacred War, and 
occupied Phocis. In August he was made a mem- 
ber of the Amphictyonic Council. In September 
he presided over the Pythian games. His claim to 
recognition as a Greek was no longer slight, seeing 
that he was now master of Delphi, the national 
sanctuary, held a seat in the most important state 
council, and had been arbiter at the national games. 
His influence steadily grew, and the sphere of his 
activity rapidly widened. Up in the north, where 
now are Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Herzegovina, 
the force of his arms was felt. Thessaly, to the 
south, became his political ally. The issue of 
Macedon and anti-Macedon crept into the politics 
of all the Greek cities. In Athens it had been, 
since the peace of 346 B.C., the issue on which the 
party lines were drawn. The old conservative party, 
which during the Peloponnesian war had opposed 
the imperial or war policy of Pericles and Cleon, 
and, in consequence, had borne the odium of pro- 
Spartan tendencies, still held to its old platform of 
domesticity, — a city government for city interests, — 
and preferred a friendly acceptance of Philip's leader- 
ship in the military and imperial affairs of Greece to 
a policy of imperial self-assertion or aggression, for 
which, it reasonably argued, the institutions of its 
city-state were not suited or intended. Though 



66 Alexander the Great. [340 b.C- 

representing in general the more settled and respect- 
able elements of die population, the conservative 
party had again to bear the odium of non-patriotism 
and even of treason, and was called the Macedonian 
party. The liberal party, with Demosthenes at its 
head, succeeding to the traditions of Pericles, was 
the party — according to the point of view — of patri- 
otism or of Jingoism. From 342 B.C. on it was in 
full control of the state. 

Steadily the Macedonian influence spread among 
the Greek cities, not by outward aggression, but by 
silent methods such as mark the onward flow of 
Russia's influence to-day in central Asia. In 345— 
344 B.C. Argos and Messene turned to Philip as an 
offset against Sparta's political aggressions. Demos- 
thenes's Second Philippic is an echo of the conflict. 
The next year Epirus was absorbed. In Elis the 
Macedonian party gained the day. In Megara it 
barely failed. In 342 B.C. two of the leading cities of 
Eubcea, Oreus and Eretria, came under the control 
of political leaders, or '•* bosses," friendly to Philip. 

In the summer of 342 B.C. Philip pushed his arms 
to the east through Thrace, and in the following year 
carried his conquests to the shores of the Black Sea 
and as far north as the modern Varna. Nothing 
separated him now from his goal, the Bosporus, — 
goal of conquerors ever since, — except Byzantium 
and the colonies that lined the Sea of Marmora and 
the Dardanelles. If he succeeded here, two supreme 
results were achieved: his route to Asia would be 
opened ; Athens would be cut off from her food- 
supply in southern Russia, and robbed of one of her 



336 B.c.i The Apprenticeship. 67 

chief grounds for political importance, the control 
of the Chersonese. In 340 B.C. \^ laid siege to Per- 
inthus and Byzantium, and war with Athens was 
begun. It was the war that ended two years later 
at Chaeronea. 

In Athens ever since the peace of 346 B.C. the anti- 
Macedonian party with Demosthenes as its leader 
had been steadily gaining in strength. In 344 B.C. it 
was able to send into the Peloponnesus the commis- 
sion which sought, though in vain, to check Philip's 
diplomatic advances in Argos and Messene. In 
343 B.C., though unable to secure the conviction of 
/Eschines, it was able to check the pro-Macedon 
movement on Megara, and to prevent Philip's ad- 
vance into Acarnania. In 342 B.C. it was able to 
bring about the rejection of Philip's friendly advances 
looking toward a settlement of difficulties on the 
basis of arbitration and mutual concessions, etc. It 
caused new Athenian settlers under Diopeithes to 
be sent to strengthen the Athenian position in the 
Chersonese and a league was formed with Chalcis, 
calculated to check Philip's advance in Eubcea. 

In the next year the issue between the two 
parties at Athens became still more sharply defined, 
and the relative strength of the anti-Macedonians 
was decidedly greater. Philip's reasonable com- 
plaints concerning Diopeithes's aggressions in the 
north were answered by Demosthenes in his two 
brilliant addresses, On the Chersonese and the Third 
Philippic, which voiced the ardour of the anti- 
Macedonian feeling at the time. They were a call 
for vigorous action and were heard. As far as 



68 Alexander the Great. [340 B.C.- 

Athens was concerned, the anti-Macedonian party, 
with Demosthenes at its head, was now in full con- 
trol. It had managed to fasten upon the leaders of 
the pro-Macedonians, at least in the minds of the 
masses, the stigma of treason, and they were politi- 
cally disabled thereby. 

The party divisions of Athens were now extended 
to all Greece. Corinth, Leucas, Corcyra, Acarna- 
nia, Achaia, Megara, and Eubcea declared against 
Philip and joined Athens and Byzantium in a league 
to resist his advances. 

The cooperation of Persia in the league was so- 
licited, and not in vain, so far at least as contribu- 
tions of money are concerned. Persia's money 
usually played a part when the Greeks quarrelled 
with each other, and the money went with certainty 
to that side whose action would tend to cripple 
the effectiveness of Greece as a whole. The issue 
came soon enough. Philip's attack on Byzantium 
a few months later was the signal for war. 

Philip would gladly have avoided war with 
Athens. His aim was the leadership of consolid- 
ated Greece against Persia. He wanted the co- 
operation of Athens as well as others, and he would 
have welcomed her as an ally. The concessions he 
offered to make to Athens in the affair of the 
Halonnesus show clearly his desire, even though 
we hear of his proposals only through the medium 
of Hegesippus's speech, delivered in the interest of 
rejecting them. Philip sought in and for itself no 
infringement upon the liberties of the Greek towns 
in things pertaining to their internal affairs ; but his 



336 B.C.I The Apprenticeship. 69 

policy did mean that he was to be dominant in all 
matters pertaining to the relation of the towns to 
the outside world. 

This the party of Demosthenes, and in conse- 
quence Athens, would not tolerate. It meant the 
merging of Athens in a governmental " trust," and 
that, Demosthenes was determined, should not be 
peacefully conceded. He was bent on war, for 
peace meant the ultimate success of Philip's plan. 
But so did unsuccessful war. Yet it is well that 
Athens fought. We know that the cause — i. e. y 
Greek particularism, as well as the war in its behalf 
— was from the start hopeless, but we rejoice that 
the fight was fought, and that Athens did not suffer 
Greece to relinquish without a struggle that which 
had made her to be Greece. 

During the year 339, as well as 340 B.C., Alexander 
probably remained at home, in charge of the govern- 
ment. His father was occupied before Byzantium 
and in the Chersonese the greater part of the year. 
History, at any rate, has nothing to tell of Alexan- 
der until his appearance in the battle of Chaeronea 
(338 B.C.). Here he made himself a name for his 
bravery, and won from Philip the highest approval. 
Plutarch says that " this bravery made Philip so 
delighted with him that he even took pleasure in 
hearing the Macedonians say, 'Alexander is the king, 
Philip the general,' " — a thing they were very apt 
to say, seeing that for the two previous years Philip 
had been almost constantly away from home, and 
Alexander had been the regent. Four or five cen- 
turies after the battle, travellers were still shown, as 



jo Alexander the Great. [340 B.c- 

a reminiscence of Alexander's participation in it, an 
old oak standing out in the plain north of the battle- 
field, under which, tradition said, his tent had been 
pitched. 

The battle had resulted in a most decisive victory 
for Philip. Thebes and Athens, with their Corin- 
thian and Achaean allies, who had been arrayed 
against him, were the only states in Greece remain- 
ing hostile to him that had been able to express 
their opposition in terms of armies. These armies 
were now utterly crushed. Thebes made no further 
attempt at defense, but gave herself over to the 
mercy of the King. And scant mercy it was! 
Thebes had played him false and betrayed him. 
Therefore his feeling toward her was radically differ- 
ent from that toward Athens, which had cordially 
and consistently hated him. Thebes he proceeded 
to chastise thoroughly. He took from her the con- 
trol of other Boeotian towns, set a garrison in the 
citadel, called back the Macedonian sympathisers 
who had been banished, made them the govern- 
ment, and condemned to death leaders who had 
been responsible for the city's action in forming the 
alliance with Athens. 

Toward Athens, on the other hand, he showed a 
mildness of temper that seems to have been to the 
Athenians as great a surprise as it was agreeable. 
The first dismay at the tidings of the battle had 
been followed by a resolute determination to defend 
the city to the utmost. It was the resolution of 
desperation. The women and children were brought 
from the country districts within the shelter of the 




ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

OBVERSE OF ONE OF THE GOLD MEDALLIONS OF TARSUS. 



336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship, 71 

walls. Frontier guards were posted. An army of 
home defense was organised. Money was raised. 
Demosthenes was sent abroad to secure supplies of 
corn, in prospect of a siege. The proposition — a 
most extreme and dangerous one — was made to arm 
the slaves of the silver-mines, as well as the free 
alien residents, thus securing an additional force of 
one hundred and fifty thousand men. Many gave 
of their substance as a free-will offering to the state. 
Stringent laws forbade any one to flee the city; to 
do so was treason. All capable of bearing arms 
were enrolled in the army ; all others became labour- 
ers on the public works, according as the authorities 
might direct. The walls were repaired, and new 
fortifications constructed. The energy of the work 
is echoed in the words of Lycurgus * : 

" In those hours no age held itself aloof from the serv- 
ice of the state. It was a time when the earth con- 
tributed its trees, the dead their tombs, the temples their 
stores of dedicated armour. Some toiled in restoring the 
walls ; some dug in the trenches ; some were building 
palisades. There was no one idle in the city." 

The Athenians were, however, entirely astray 
regarding Philip's purposes. He did not purpose 
to spend months and years in besieging a city whose 
cordial cooperation, and not whose destruction, he 
ultimately sought. Through the orator Demades, 
who happened to be among the captives, he found 
a convenient way of intimating to the Athenians 
their mistake. The result was an embassy to Philip, 

* Oration against Leocrates, sec. 44. 



72 Alexander the Great. [340B.C- 

composed of Demades, Phocion, and ^Eschines, all 
representatives of the Tory-Macedonian party. 
This Demades was the one who had rebuked the 
King as, in his drunken revel of triumph on the night 
of the battle, he lowered himself to jeer his captives. 
" King, fate hath assigned thee the role of Agamem- 
non, but thou doest the deeds of Thersites." 

Philip received the ambassadors graciously. He 
agreed to release the Athenian captives without 
ransom, and to send to Athens the bodies of the 
dead, to be buried in their native soil. The terms 
of peace were proposed by a commission which he 
sent later to Athens, consisting of no less important 
persons than the son Alexander and the favourite 
general and counsellor Antipater. This commission 
arranged with the Athenians the following terms: 
Athens was to remain, so far as its internal affairs 
were concerned, entirely autonomous and free. No 
Macedonian army was to enter its territory, no 
Macedonian ship to enter its harbours. It was to 
be an ally of Philip. The parish of Oropus, on the 
north-eastern boundary of Attica, which it had always 
claimed, but which of late had belonged to Thebes, 
was to be added to its territory. On the other 
hand, it relinquished its monopoly of protecting 
commerce in the ^Egean, and retained of its island 
possessions only Samos and Delos, Lemnos and 
Imbros. Its naval hegemony and ALgean empire 
were thus at an end. Furthermore, the clause 
which stated, in diplomatic phraseology, that " if 
the Athenians wish, it shall be permitted them to 
participate in the general peace and in the National 



336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship. 73 

Council which the King proposes to create," thinly 
veiled the plain fact that the state was to be hence- 
forth a member of a confederacy led and governed 
by Philip. 

These terms were accepted by the Athenians, in 
the reaction from their first fright, with little short 
of enthusiasm. The treaty was also most satis- 
factory from the Macedonian point of view. It 
must, indeed, be regarded as fair to both parties, 
for it expressed reasonably the actual facts of the 
situation. 

Alexander's first diplomatic work had been an 
eminent success. It gave a presage of the success 
which was, throughout his career, to attend his 
efforts in procuring accord and cooperation between 
diverse nationalities. But it was more than a pre- 
sage : its success was based upon a principle which 
reappears as conditioning his later dealings with 
conquered peoples. By generosity in little and 
relatively unessential things, he made willing sub- 
jects and achieved his great essential purposes. We 
are not informed precisely what part Alexander bore 
in framing the terms of the peace, but we are in- 
clined, from their character, to infer that it was no 
unimportant part. In the events of this period we 
seem to mark a transition from the canny cleverness 
of Philip to the imperial generosity of Alexander. 

Toward the end of the year (338 B.C.) the Hellenic 
Congress, assembled at Corinth, gave shape and 
formal organisation to the new empire. Interstate 
peace and freedom of commerce constituted its 
basis. Each state was freely to conduct its own 



74 Alexander the Great. [340 B.C. - 

local government, and to pay no tribute. Existing 
forms of government in the several states were to 
remain undisturbed. No Greek, even as a mer- 
cenary, was to bear arms against Philip. For exe- 
cuting the purposes of the compact was created a 
national council (synedrion), to be held at Corinth. 
The Amphictyonic Council was appointed to serve 
as the supreme judicial tribunal of the league. The 
quota of troops and ships to be furnished by each 
state for the army and navy of the league was de- 
finitely fixed, and Philip was made commander-in- 
chief of the whole, with the special and immediate 
purpose of conducting against the Persians a war of 
reprisal for the desecrated sanctuaries of Hellenic 
gods. 

Macedonian garrisons occupied the two great 
strategic points, Chalcis and the citadel of Corinth, 
besides Ambracia and Thebes. All the states of 
Greece proper, except Sparta, participated in the 
compact. Sparta's refusal was mere helpless stub- 
bornness. Girt about by strong states controlling 
all the passes into the Eurotas valley, and robbed 
of all her strength, she no longer weighed in inter- 
state affairs. Philip's work, so far as international 
history is concerned, was now virtually complete. 
He had, with a political sagacity such as the world 
has rarely seen, combined the perversely individual- 
istic elements of Old Greece into a new cooperative 
body, and thereby created the pou sto from which 
Alexander was to move the world. 

In the year following the battle there arose a bit- 
ter family quarrel, which seriously disturbed the 



336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship. 75 

hitherto kindly relations of Philip and his son, and 
for a time threatened the peace of the kingdom. It 
originated in jealousies consequent upon Philip's 
new ventures in wedlock as well as love. " The 
distemper of the harem," as Plutarch puts it, 
" communicated itself to the kingdom." We 
hardly require Plutarch's explanation that Olympias, 
Alexander's mother, was a " jealous, high-strung 
woman " to account for what followed; but it really 
would appear, from the account of Philip's attach- 
ments which we have in the extant fragments of 
Satyrus's Life of Philip, that Olympias tolerated it 
all until it came to his proposed marriage with Cleo- 
patra, " of whom he was passionately enamoured." 
It may be suspected that it was something more 
than the dynamics of Philip's ardour toward his 
new acquisition that stirred Olympias's wrath. 
Cleopatra was a Macedonian princess, niece of the 
influential Attalus, and there was a chauvinistic 
spirit abroad that threatened to unsettle Alexan- 
der's claim to the succession in the interest of a 
possible heir of pure Macedonian blood. Here was 
explosive material in abundance ; only a spark was 
needed. 

At the wedding-banquet, Attalus, heated with 
wine, had in his toast to the new pair called on all 
good Macedonians to pray that the union might be 
blessed with the birth of a genuine successor to the 
throne — this in allusion to the Macedonian origin 
of Cleopatra, in contrast to Olympias's Molottan 
birth. That was more than Alexander could be 
asked to tolerate. Hurling his beaker at Attalus's 



j 6 Alexander the Great. [340 B.C. - 

head, " You scoundrel!" he cried, " what do you 
think / am ? Am I a bastard ? ' ' Philip rose from 
his couch to interpose, and sprang against his son 
with drawn sword. But his cups and his fury were 
too much for him. He slipped and fell. Then 
came Alexander's fearful taunt: " Here, gentle- 
men, is a man who has been preparing to cross from 
Europe into Asia; but he has upset in crossing from 
one couch to another." 

Immediately after this occurrence, Olympias, ac- 
companied by her son, left the country, and with- 
drew to her brother, the King of Epirus. From 
there Alexander went into Illyria, with the probable 
purpose of securing support against Philip, should 
he need it. Sympathy with Alexander was wide- 
spread also in Macedon, especially among the 
younger men of the court and the army. While 
things were in this sorry state, Demaratus, the 
Corinthian statesman, came to visit Philip at Pella, 
and to the King's first inquiry, whether the Greeks 
were living in amity and accord, answered as a 
friend and straightforwardly: " It ill becomes thee, 
Philip, to have solicitude about the Greeks, when 
thou hast involved thine own house in this great 
dissension, and filled it with evils." 

Philip profited by the rebuke. Demaratus was 
commissioned to act the part of mediator. A re- 
conciliation was effected, and Alexander returned to 
Pella. The causes of trouble had not, however, 
been removed. Olympias remained still in Epirus, 
implacable in her resentment of Philip's indignities, 
and hating with a hatred worthy of a woman both 



336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship. 77 

high-strung and strong-minded. She sought to 
move her brother to take up arms and avenge her 
insults. She kept her son's suspicions alert. He 
must not tamely submit to being displaced in the 
succession by the son of one of the new favourites. 
It was a woman's jealousy. 

We have no indication that Philip had any real 
intention of displacing Alexander. It is hardly 
thinkable that he had. We have, however, abund- 
ant evidence that he was suspected, not alone by 
Olympias, but generally among Alexander's friends. 

Philip was now ready to advance into Asia, but 
he was unwilling to leave the soil of Europe before 
he had allayed the discontent of the Epirotes con- 
sequent upon his treatment of Olympias. This he 
undertook to do by arranging a marriage between 
his daughter, Alexander's own sister, and her uncle, 
the King of Epirus. The wedding was appointed 
for August of the same year (336 B.C.). It was to be 
held at ^Egse, the earlier capital of Macedonia, and 
the ancestral home of its kings. It was made the 
occasion of a gorgeous popular fete. Feasts, sports, 
and dramatic exhibitions were added to the more 
formal observances of receiving the guests and 
glorifying the King. Family feuds were ostensibly 
buried. Olympias returned from Epirus. Invita- 
tions were sent everywhere throughout Greece to 
the partisans and personal friends of the King. A 
vast concourse assembled. Not only came princes 
and statesmen, but many cities, among them Athens, 
were present by their representatives, and sent 
crowns of gold and series of resolutions to express 



78 Alexander the Great. [340 B.C.- 

their loyalty, and to do the King appropriate honour. 
It became a truly imperial fete, the festal ratification 
of the newly founded empire, the hailing of the 
Emperor; but in the midst of it all Philip was foully 
murdered. 

The perpetrator of the deed was one Pausanias, a 
Macedonian, member of the King's body-guard ; the 
motive, private revenge. Pausanias had suffered a 
most degrading insult at the hands of Attalus, Cleo- 
patra's uncle. He besought the King to give him 
revenge. This the King persistently declined to do, 
being influenced by Cleopatra, and by the consider- 
ation of Attalus's importance to him as a general. 
Pausanias's hatred turned itself now against the 
King. Vanity and envy were his consuming pas- 
sions. In the murder of the King he found satis- 
faction for both. " How may one become most 
famous ? " he asked, one day, in the course of a dis- 
cussion with the sophist Hermocrates, whose lectures 
he was attending. " By making away with one who 
has done greatest deeds," answered the professor. 
Attalus, Cleopatra, Philip, had now become one in 
the eye of his wrath. To kill Philip was to over- 
throw Attalus, and put his niece at the mercy of 
Olympias. 

The second day of the festival was to be signalised 
by gala performances in the theatre. Clad in a 
white robe, and attended by a stately procession, 
Philip advanced toward the gate. The place was 
already full. Long before daylight people had been 
crowding in to claim their seats. As an indication 
of the security felt in the good will of the people, the 





GOLD STATER OF ALEXANDER THE 

GREAT, THE HEAD BEING 

THAT OF ATHENE. 

FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 




OBVERSE. REVERSE. 

SILVER TETRADRACHM OF LYSIMACHUS (KING 
OF THRACE, B.C. 306-281). 

OBVERSE, HEAD OF ALEXANDER. FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRfTISH MUSEUA 





OBVERSE. REVERSE. 

SILVER COIN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN STRUCK DURING HIS LIFETIME. OB- 
VERSE, HEAD OF HERCULES. REVERSE, ZEUS HOLDING 
THE EAGLE, SEATED. FROM THE ORIGINAL IN 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



. 



336 B.C.] The Apprenticeship. 79 

King walked in the procession entirely unattended, 
and with a considerable space intervening between 
him and his body-guard. Right at the entrance to 
the theatre the assassin lay in wait for him. A 
single thrust of the sword laid the King dead at his 
feet. He sprang to his horse, and was off. The 
King's guards rushed in pursuit. But for an accident 
he would have escaped. As he galloped away, a 
tangling vine caught his foot ; he was thrown from 
his horse, and, before he could rise, Perdiccas and 
the guards who were in pursuit had made way with 
him. But Philip the Great was dead — in the forty- 
seventh year of his age, the twenty-fourth of his 
reign. 

The murder was purely an act of private and per- 
sonal revenge, but the most various rumours and 
subtle surmises were current, connecting with the 
deed now the rival Lyncestian line; now Olympias 
and even Alexander; now the poor Shah of Persia 
himself. That Olympias should have been suspected 
was perfectly natural. Philip's death was undoubt- 
edly quite acceptable to her. She was entirely 
capable of having abetted it. Her hatred of Cleo- 
patra and Attalus seemed, furthermore, to form a 
bond of common interest between the assassin and 
herself. All these things serve, however, rather to 
explain how the suspicion arose than to prove its 
correctness. The strained political situation un- 
doubtedly stimulated the murderous instinct of the 
doer of the deed, as was the case with the assassin 
of President Garfield ; but more than this we have 
no right to infer from the evidence. The suspicions 



So Alexander the Great. T340-336 B.C. 

affecting Alexander were most certainly baseless, as 
all his actions then and thereafter would amply 
prove, if there were need of proof. 

Be it as it may, Philip was gone, and, to all ap- 
pearances, his empire with him. His heir was a 
stripling of twenty years. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE OLD GREECE. 
336 B.C. 

THE life of Alexander was destined to become 
the efficient cause of changing an Old Greece 
into a New and Greater Greece. But before 
we can understand the meaning of the new Greece, 
or rightly appreciate the potency of the forces which 
brought it into being, we must have a clear concep- 
tion of all that which in history, condition, thought, 
and life combined to form the essential character- 
istics of the Old Greece, or, the Greece of " class- 
ical " times. With this subject the next four 
chapters will be occupied. 

Many histories of Greece, and, in fact, the inter- 
est of most students of things Grecian, end with the 
downfall of Greek freedom at the battle of Chaeronea. 
It is not unreasonable, but, on the contrary, in the 
highest degree reasonable, that the historian should 
find here a convenient stopping-place. The history 
of Old Greece reaches here, at least in the outward 
form of the facts, a sudden and summary conclusion, 

81 



82 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

though it is a conclusion for which the inner facts 
have long been making their relentless preparation. 
With this event there begins the history of a New 
Greece, and he who undertakes to tell Uo story must 
thoroughly revise his standards of judgment and re- 
adjust his point of view. An entirely new class of 
historical factors and of political motives will claim 
his consideration, and radically different tests of 
national success must be applied. Except as the 
New Greece might serve to represent the practical 
application of the theory of Old Greek life to the 
broader life of the world, or as a transfer of the old 
life to a new and larger field, there is no sufficient 
reason why the historian should hesitate to choose 
as the end or the beginning of his task this plain 
boundary line which Philip's triumphs in Greece 
located, and Alexander's subjugation of the East 
made indelible. 

The Old Greece was essentially a thing of small 
areas and dimensions. This is true alike of its ter- 
ritory, its states, its horizon, its scale of living, and 
its products. Its development was intensive rather 
than extensive. To obtain high figures we must 
replace our material units of measurement with 
spiritual ones. If the Greek states were merely 
great states in miniature we would not lay such 
stress upon this feature as to mention it in the first 
place. Greek communities were not merely dimin- 
utive. They were not dwarfs. Smallness was an 
essential characteristic of them, as it is of a keyhole. 
So of their life and their institutions, — they lost 
their character with enlargement. 





REVERSE. 

PHILIP II., FATHER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

ONE OF THE GOLD MEDALLIONS OF TARSUS. OBVERSE, THE HEAD 
OF PHILIP II. REVERSE, VICTORY IN A QUADRIGA. 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 83 

The total area of Greece proper, including Thes- 
saly and Epirus, is only half that of the State of 
New York, and considerably less than that of Scot- 
land. Its greatest length, from Mt. Olympus on 
the north to Cape Taenarum on the south, is two 
hundred and fifty miles, or about the distance from 
the Adirondacks to New York. Its greatest breadth, 
from Acarnania at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth 
on the west to Marathon on the east is one hundred 
and eighty miles, or about the breadth of Ireland. 
The State of Rhode Island has the better of Attica 
in land-area by some eighty square miles. The Gulf 
of Corinth, that divides Greece in two, taken in its 
entire length from the western sea to the harbour of 
Corinth, approximates the dimensions of Long 
Island Sound. 

Sparta and Athens were relatively remote from 
each other in position as in character. For a cent- 
ury and a half in the intensest period of Grecian 
history they represented the boldest contrast in life, 
in political ideas, and in civilising tendencies, and 
were the nuclei of contrasted and belligerent inter- 
ests. And yet in terms of almost any geography 
but that of Greece they were neighbours. Herod- 
otus * tells us that the courier Pheidippides just 
before the battle of Marathon carried the news of 
the Persian approach in something less than f forty- 



* SEvrepaioS eh rov ABrfvaioov o.6teq$ ev 27rdpr%. — Herod., 
vi., 106. 

f Antistius and Philonides, two couriers of Alexander the Great, 
are said by Pliny to have covered on one occasion 1200 stades or 
135 miles in twenty-four hours. 



84 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

eight hours from Athens to Sparta. It was un- 
doubtedly a great feat, and as such it was famed in 
after years, hut the achievements in the " go-as-you- 
please " races of modern times prove that Herodotus 
may well have reported faithfully, for though the 
distance by the winding modern carriage-roads is 
two hundred and thirty miles or more, the foot- 
paths through the hills where Pan met him might 
well have offered the runner a much shorter course. 
As the crow flies, the places are less than a hundred 
miles apart. 

Athens and her other ancient rival Thebes are, 
even by the modern carriage-road, nearer each other 
than Boston and Providence, and in a straight line 
they are only thirty-five miles apart. ^Egina, which 
was for generations the commercial superior of 
Athens and her bitterest political foe, is a meagre 
island seven or eight miles long and wide, facing the 
entrances to the Attic plain, in plainest view from 
every part of it, and only thirteen miles away. The 
Acropolis of Athens looks out over the straits in 
which the battle of Salamis was fought, but three 
miles outside the harbour of the city. Corinth and 
Argos are connected by a modern railway of thirty- 
three miles' length. From Athens to Eleusis and 
back is an easy morning's drive. 

The very fashion of the landscape protests against 
the vast and huge, and suggests on every hand fine- 
ness rather than grandeur, and elaboration rather 
than extension. The coast-line of this Mediter- 
ranean Norway represents a perpetual struggle of 
earth and sea. Narrow gulfs penetrate the land, or 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 85 

miniature bays lead up to pleasant beaches fringing 
amphitheatred plains. Ragged headlands jut out 
audaciously into the sea, and lofty peaks descend 
abruptly to the shore. 

The face of the country, too, is like a piece of 
crumpled paper. It seems as if it had been sought 
to comprehend the widest superficial area within the 
least extent. Fertile plains appear in rapid alterna- 
tion with rugged mountain chains. The plain of 
Athens stretches back fourteen miles from the sea, 
but scarcely at any point exceeds five miles in width. 
The plain of Sparta is a narrow strip of fertile land 
enclosed by the mountain wall of Parnon on the 
east, and of Taygetus, reaching to an elevation of 
nearly eight thousand feet, on the west. So the 
plain of Argos, and of Tegea, and many another. 
Some are larger, some smaller, but they all have 
their history. Wherever in Greece you find a 
mountain-locked plain, most especially if it open to 
the sea, there you find the strong flavour of local 
history. Each has its story to tell, a story of pe- 
culiar institutions, peculiar traditions, and a peculiar 
life. 

Islands, too, of every size and shape skirt the coast 
and are scattered in easy proximity to one another 
over all the face of the sea. From Attica to the 
southern coast of Asia Minor they form almost a 
natural bridge of stepping-stones. 

Both plains and islands formed what was to early 
society a fortunate combination of isolation and 
intercourse. Some measure of isolation is an es- 
sential condition of the development of primitive 



86 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

institutions, that they may have opportunity to 
crystallise into individuality. Reasonable inter- 
course secures the means of growth, which assures 
their vitality. 

This leads us naturally to our second point in the 
characterisation of Old Greece, — the particularism 
of its communities. The civilisation which we call 
Greek is the resultant of various self-consistent de- 
velopments about a large number of strongly local- 
ised centres. Within a radius of scarcely less than 
fifteen miles existed three strong and populous 
communities that differed most widely from each 
other in character, usages, dress, language, govern- 
ment, and even in blood. Megara was Dorian, 
Athens Ionian, and at least the prevailing element 
in Theban blood was y£olian. The people of each 
city had its own strongly marked and universally 
recognised characteristics. The Megarians were a 
plain, practical folk, but rude in the arts of life. 
The Athenians were alert, sociable, versatile, hos- 
pitable to men and ideas. The Thebans excelled 
the others in a command and use of the luxuries and 
refinements of civilised life, but their virtue went to 
brawn rather than to brain, and they enjoyed in 
contemporary opinion the unquestioned repute of a 
many-sided carnal-mindedness. 

Nothing that characterises the mutual isolation of 
these petty cantons is more striking than the divers- 
ity of their languages. It was Greek indeed that 
they all three spoke, and they could undoubtedly 
make themselves readily understood by one another, 
but the dialects sounded as different as those of a 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 87 

New England farmer and a southern negro. These 
dialects were not merely the vulgar idiom of the 
common people ; they were the recognised standards 
of speech for the respective communities, employed 
as the language of public documents and laws, and 
inscribed upon public monuments. 

Hundreds of inscriptions upon stone, which mod- 
ern explorations and excavations have brought to 
light, testify to this marvellous diversity of speech, 
which is. the finest and surest testimonial to the es- 
sential particularism of the Greek communities. 
Almost every little plain has left us, thus, traces of 
its particular speech. And not only do these idioms 
differ in their substance of vocabulary and sounds, 
but almost every one is marked by some peculiarity 
of writing, and some differ very widely in this re- 
gard, though all these forms of writing have their 
common origin in the Phoenician alphabet. It is in 
such a diversity of usage between two Greek dis- 
tricts, Chalcis in Eubcea and the Ionians of the 
Asiatic coast, that the difference between the two 
prevailing modern types of the Phoenician alphabet 
takes its rise, the Roman, which we use in common 
with Western Europe, and the Greek, which has 
merged its interests with the Eastern Church. In 
Chalcis the symbol X meant ks t in Ionia ch ; in 
Chalcis H was h, in Ionia e ; in Chalcis the letter / 
had the form L, in Ionia A. This modern difference 
between the Roman and the Greek alphabets is an 
impressive monument to the vigour of the old Greek 
particularism. 

One by one during the course of the fourth cent- 



88 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

ury the states gave up their local types of writing, 
but still they clung tenaciously to the local patois as 
their only recognised standard of speech. They 
simply wrote it out phonetically with the newly re- 
ceived Ionic alphabet, just as if York, in England, 
and New Orleans, in America, while both accepting 
Dr. Sweet's phonetic alphabet, should insist upon 
printing their daily papers in a transcript of their 
daily, common speech. It was but slowly, and after 
centuries of resistance to the rising tide of cosmopol- 
itanism, that these local dialects grudgingly yielded 
place to a common standard of speech. At first 
there came a dualism of standard. The community 
of feeling and interest, which the Achaean and Mto- 
lian leagues represented, created for Western Greece 
a common standard, which till nearly the beginning 
of the Christian era maintained itself distinct from 
that Attic standard which the conquests of Alexan- 
der made the lingua franca of the Orient, and 
eventually the exclusive basis of the mediaeval and 
modern Greek idiom. It has seemed best to speak 
of these facts of language history thus fully, because 
the sensitiveness of the Greek to his language has 
made them the exactest gauge of the transition of 
Greek life from particularism to comopolitanism. 

Besides the diversities of speech various peculiari- 
ties of dress, manner, usages, and character im- 
pressed with a strong and universally recognised 
individuality the popular types of the different dis- 
tricts. The lavish and opulent cuisine of the The- 
bans made the " Boeotian appetite " as proverbial 
throughout the Grecian lands as the ill-famed 





OBVERSE. 



TETRADRACHM WITH HEAD OF ALEXANDER 

THE GREAT WEARING THE LION-SKIN 

OF HERCULES. 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 89 

" black soup " of Sparta, the Athenian beans, and 
the malodorous onions of Megara. Such local 
peculiarities afforded welcome material for the comic 
poets, as when in the Acliarnians, Aristophanes 
imitates, with an exactness which is surprisingly- 
verified by the modern discoveries of inscriptions, 
the brogue of the Megarian and Boeotian peasants 
whom he introduces as traders in the Athenian 
market-place, and represents the Boeotian in par- 
ticular with a sack full of local culinary olla podrida. 
Thus lines 872 ff. : 

"Dicceopolis. Ah ! good day to ye, my nice little 
Boeotian, my little johnny-cake eater. What have you 
brought to market to-day ? 

Boeotian. A full line of Boeotian goods and goodies. 
Here's marjoram and pennyroyal, mats and lamp-wicks, 
ducks and daws, coots and teal, sandpeeps and partridge. 

D. Why, you 've come to market like a regular spell 
of /<?ze//-weather (1. e. f bringing the birds of passage from 
the north). 

B. Yes, and I 've brought geese, hare, foxes, moles, 
hedgehogs, weasels, pieties, meadow icties, and eels from 
Lake Copais." 

In striking contrast hereto stands the classic fru- 
gality of the Spartan appetite, which is amply illus- 
trated by Plutarch's anecdote of that man of Laconia 
" who once in a wayside inn, having bought a little 
fish, gave it to the host to have cooked, and on being 
asked for the cheese and the vinegar and the oil re- 
plied, ' Why, if I had those I would n't have bought 
the fish! ' " 



90 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

The widely differing standards of dress may be 
forcibly illustrated by the fact that in the fifth cent- 
ury, long after the Athenian women had adopted 
into general use the linen chemise-like under-gar- 
ment called the chiton, the Dorian women still wore 
the old-fashioned woollen peplos as their only gar- 
ment. The dress as well as the armour and equip- 
ments of the Spartan men were also radically 
different from those in use at Athens. 

The difference in educational standards is quite 
as marked. In an age when every Athenian boy of 
citizen parentage was taught to read and write as 
well as to have some acquaintance with the ancient 
poets, the most of the Spartans were absolutely un- 
lettered, and the density of Boeotian ignorance was 
so great that some esteemed the Sphinx, who made 
such havoc among the Thebans, to have been no 
more nor less than an impersonation of illiteracy. 

In the earlier history of the Greek cantons a great 
diversity in standards of weights and measures ap- 
pears; thus among the standards of long measure 
the Attic stadion was approximately 582 feet, the 
Olympic stadion 631 feet, the Ionic stadion 689 feet. 
In the matter of weight the necessities of inter- 
cantonal trade early developed a tendency to adopt 
one of the three common standards, the ^Eginetan, 
the Olympian, or the Eubcean, but the variety in 
weight and fineness of the different coinages which 
the caprice, the dishonesty, or the particularism of 
scores of petty states put into circulation created 
a condition of things that was well-nigh hopeless to 
all except the easy honour of the money-changers. 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 91 



Only the "turtles" of ^Egina, the "owls" of 
Athens, and the " horses " of Corinth secured at 
different times anything like a general currency in 
the markets of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

The isolation of Sparta from all interstate trade 
is emphasised by the ancient law of Lycurgus, for- 
bidding the use of gold or silver money in trade. 
Even after Sparta came into the exercise of imperial 
power and levied tribute upon dependent cities, the 
possession of the precious metals was restricted by 
law to the state. Inevitable as was the ultimate 
failure of such a law under the freer intercourse of 
the fourth century, its failure implied and involved 
the collapse of the peculiar Spartan community sys- 
tem. The law in its integrity purported nothing 
less than the principle that Spartans as individuals 
should have no dealings except with Spartans. 

The arrangements of the calendar show a like 
diversity among the different districts. Some began 
the year at July, as Athens, some at January, as 
Thebes, some at October, as the Achaeans. There 
was the greatest disagreement as to the names of 
the month. Thus the month of March (approx.) 
was called Artemisius by the Spartans, Theoxenius 
by the Delphians, Prostaterius by the Boeotians, 
Galaxion by the Delians, and Elaphebolion by the 
Athenians, while the Achaeans, and perhaps others, 
named their months by their numerical order as 
first (Protos), second, etc. 

The very existence of a calendar among the primi- 
tive Greek peoples was due to the necessity felt for 
paying to the gods the reverence due them at the 



92 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

proper season, and its diversities only reflect the 
diversity of religious usages and interests in the 
different" cantons. To one who has learned of the 
Greek religion solely from the pages of Hesiod and 
Homer with their perfectly organised Olympian 
family of gods and definitely determined character- 
isation of individual divinities, the actual conditions 
of religious faith in the communities of European 
Greece will seem strangely confused and imperfect. 
Homer knows only a united Greece. Diversities of 
tongue and race, of usage and institution, sink out 
of sight. A unifying potency resides in the genius 
of the poet inspired by the contrasts of oriental 
barbarism. His gods are pan-Hellenic. One might 
suppose that every good Greek worshipped them 
all, and that the territories of their power were 
mutually well-defined and sternly recognised. This 
is in no wise the case. The theogony was an 
after-thought. It represented a consolidation and 
harmonisation of the favourite cults of various com- 
munities. As such it was a movement toward 
nationalism, and when in later centuries the poems 
of Homer had come to be recognised as a sort of 
pan-Hellenic Bible, their influence was very great, 
not only in shaping the popular theology, but also 
in quickening the national sentiment. As con- 
trasted with their bland assumption of theological 
uniformity, the actual condition of religious practices 
in the Greek states of the historical period might 
well appear, though deceptively, to represent de- 
cadence and disruption. 

Each village community had its own favourite 



336 B.C.] 



The Old Greece. 93 



divinities. It is plainly impossible that in every 
community the whole corona of Olympian gods 
should be honoured with the peculiar service due to 
each. But what is more, the types of the different 
divinities differed greatly as understood and wor- 
shipped in different localities, very like the rival 
Madonnas of Spanish villages. Special titles signi- 
fied the special attributes of the particular divinities 
which were emphasised in each locality, and these 
often gave rise to what were essentially distinct 
personalities. Thus Apollo was Carneus at Sparta, 
Pythius at Delphi. Artemis was known as Iphigenia 
in Hermione, as Orthia in Sparta. In Argos and 
^Egina chief honours were bestowed upon Hera, 
whose cult was but little observed, for instance, at 
Athens. Apollo and Artemis received most atten- 
tion at Sparta. The Aphrodite and Poseidon fest- 
ivals were the most celebrated at Corinth. So 
Hercules was the object of distinguished honour at 
Thebes, Demeter at Eleusis, the Graces at Orcho- 
menos, Asclepius at Epidaurus. 

The spirit of particularism identified itself most 
strongly with the peculiar features of these local 
cults. The largeness of hospitality toward many 
different worships which it was the peculiar pride of 
Athens to show, and which converted, as we hear, 
well-nigh every sixth day into a festival, indicates to 
us not so much the superior religiosity or pietism of 
the Athenian people as their broader spirit of 
toleration, their larger Hellenic interest, and their 
earlier grasp of those principles which proved the 
forerunners of cosmopolitanism. 



94 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

It is evidently of importance for our present in- 
quiry to estimate with some exactness the extent 
and freedom of intercourse between the Greek can- 
tons. This certainly differed greatly with different 
states. Sparta looked with suspicious eye upon all 
intercourse. Spartan citizens were not allowed 
without special permission of the Ephors to travel 
outside the country, " lest they should become 
enamoured of foreign usages"*; and the visits of 
foreigners, to say nothing of attempts at settlement, 
were discouraged in various ways, sometimes by 
actual expulsion, " lest they might be teachers of 
evil, "f Similar statements are made concerning 
the policy of other states, thus of the cities of Crete 
and of Apollonia in Illyria; and Plato proposed in 
his ideal state to forbid all citizens under forty years 
of age to travel. Athens among all the Greek cities 
enjoyed the highest reputation for its hospitality 
and liberality toward strangers, but even here the 
conditions bear no comparison to the freedom of 
modern cities. 

f The chief highway of trade in the historical age 
was the sea, for Greece had practically no navigable 
rivers, and its roads were few and difficult.. Land 
journeys were made either on mule-back or on foot. 
Vigorous as was the trade by sea, it suffered con- 
stant restriction by the risks of war which made 
no distinction between private and public property. 
During a war between any maritime states, the coast 
trade must have been sadly disrupted ; thus in the 

* Ilarpocration, p. 159. 

I Plutarch, Instit, Lacon, 19, 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. 95 

Peloponnesian war the Athenians maintained at 
Naupactus a blockade of the entire Corinthian gulf. 
Of still greater moment, however, was the multiform 
state interference with the natural course of trade. 
Athens forbade Athenian ships to bring grain to 
any other port, and compelled all grain-ships touch- 
ing at the Peiraeus to sell at least two-thirds of their 
cargo there.* Various states undertook also to regu- 
late or even to prevent the exportation of certain 
commodities which they needed at home or wished 
to withhold from their rivals. In the Bosporus toll 
was frequently levied upon the grain-ships passing 
through, and at one time under Athenian control of 
Byzantium, we know it was as high as ten per cent. 
Duties for the purpose of revenue, though not of 
protection, were levied upon imports, and so uni- 
versal was this practice that the inhabitants of 
Cyme, who not until three hundred years after the 
founding of their city began to levy harbour dues, 
were taunted with stupidity at not having learned 
before that their city lay by the sea.f Despite all 
such restrictions enforced by scores of petty states, 
a reasonably active trade existed between the coast 
towns and certainly such trade centres as Corinth 
and Athens were meeting-places for the most vari- 
ous sorts and conditions of men. The great religious 
fairs at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, etc., gave also 
abundant opportunity for intercourse under the pro- 
tection of a general armistice, and brought together 

* Biichsenschiitz, Besitz und Erwerb im griechischen Alterthume, 
PP- 549 ff- 

f Strabo, xiii., 3, 3. 



g6 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

not only motley throngs of hucksters and sutlers, 
but representatives of the Greek cities and of all 
classes of society. 

Except, however, for the purposes of trade, of 
attending the festivals, and of diplomatic missions, 
travel in the period of which we are dealing was 
practically unknown. The tourist pure and simple 
was a development of the Roman period, when it 
seems to have been, as Pliny says, a recognised part 
of the education of every Roman gentleman to have 
visited the historic soil of Greece at least, if not also 
of Egypt and Asia Minor. 

The musicians, artists, playwrights, and rhetorical 
teachers, as well as those few, like Solon, Lycurgus, 
Pythagoras, and Herodotus, who undertook jour- 
neys for ethnological and sociological purposes, con- 
stituted brilliant exceptions to the general rule. 
Socrates had notably never been away from home 
except on military service. Why the Greek should 
have regarded the sentence of banishment as so 
severe a punishment as he did we can ably appreci- 
ate when we consider how utterly forlorn and un- 
natural was the condition of aliens in most Greek 
towns. 

The history of Old Greece is evidently the history 
of small communities, and it is the self-consistent 
development of the community-life that constitutes 
its most prominent characteristic. Intercourse there 
was; some degree of mixture was not excluded, but 
these never exceeded the immediate capacity for 
assimilation. Herein it is that all the products of 
the classical age, whether of thought or form, acquire 



336 B.C.] The Old Greece. gj 

their identity, and separate themselves unmistak- 
ably not only from the creations of modern civilisa- 
tions, but from those of the Hellenistic and the 
Roman age in Greece. It is not a question of their 
superiority, but of their greater truth. The com- 
munity-life, being homogeneous and self-dependent, 
yielded natural products. Their form is fresh 
moulded from life. Even the categories of literary 
form — the drama, the lyric poem, the oration, the 
philosophic dialogue — correspond directly to real 
activities, and whatever product of the times we 
study, — the literature, the sculpture, the architec- 
ture, the religion, the philosophy, — it opens a 
window that looks straight in upon the life. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OLD GREECE — ITS POLITICAL ORGANISATIONS. 
336 B.C. 

NOTHING more definitely characterises the 
organisation of life in Old Greece than the 
notion it entertained of the state and the re- 
lation of the individual thereto. An exposition and 
analysis of this notion cannot be evaded here, with- 
out overlooking the supreme issue in the political 
significance of Alexander's career. When he ap- 
peared upon the scene, he found Greek society still 
organised upon the basis of the old theory. The 
thirteen years of his rule relegated that theory to 
the antiquities. The very existence of it, indeed, 
and its strenuous hold on life long past the period 
of its natural efficiency made the brilliant career of 
Alexander possible. The firm persistency of the 
old made the transition to the new more rapid, for 
when Alexander appeared, the times were ripe for 
him, and more than ripe. 

With our strongly rooted modern prejudices con- 
cerning the place and function of the state, it is no 



MAP OF THE WORLD 
ACCORDING TO ERATOSTHENES. 




336 B.C.] Old Greece. 99 

easy matter to reproduce and re-think the ancient 
idea of the same. Yet it is something precise and 
unmistakable. " The Greek states were essentially 
city states; modern states are essentially national 
states." So Bluntschli aptly expresses the plainest 
and most universally accepted distinction. The 
state was not territorial, nor was its individuality in 
any way identified with extent of land. Citizenship 
was not determined by residence within any particu- 
lar territorial limits. There were inhabitants of 
Attica, but no citizens of Attica. So far as any of 
these had a political existence, they were known as 

Athenians." The exercise of political functions 
such as voting was, for instance, possible only in 
the city. The idea of citizenship and the idea of 
the state associated themselves entirely with the 
city. The territory of the state was viewed as a 
body of land surrounding the city, dependent upon 
its control, and subserving its uses, while, in sharp 
contrast thereto, the modern conception regards 
cities as denser aggregations of population here and 
there in the territory of the state. 

The Roman theory of the relation of the city to 
the state was in this regard not unlike the Greek, 
and even in its greatest extension the Roman em- 
pire was administered under the forms at least of a 
city government. Roman citizenship was citizen- 
ship of the city, Rome, and not of the empire. 

The state was not to be identified with its territory, 
and still less with its population. " The citizen is 
not made a citizen by dwelling anywhere in particu- 
lar," says Aristotle. The aliens or metics, who in 



ioo Alexander the Great. [336 B. a 

the latter part of the fifth century and in the fourth 
century were attracted in such numbers by the 
trading opportunities at Athens as to number by 
the census of 309 B.C. not less than forty thousand 
souls, were no part of the state. Except as one 
had chosen a patron ox prostates among the citizens 
to represent him, and had become his ward in all 
political relations, he had no existence in the eyes 
of the state. The state was neither territory nor 
population. It was an ancient and sacred bond, or 
covenant relation, in which the participants were 
both gods and men, and in which the basis of affilia- 
tion was neither contiguity of residence nor con- 
sideration of mutual interest, but a community of 
worship that had its ultimate ground in a real or 
presumed community of blood. 

The state in its idea, in its constitution, in its in- 
stitutions, and in its source of authority was an out- 
growth or enlargement of the family. The priestly 
and authoritative functions of the ancient head of 
the state were the counterpart of those of the father. 
The authority of the family preceded that of the 
state and was its type and its source, not the re. 
verse. Citizenship is a projection of the family re- 
lations upon the broader background of the civic 
community. The individual approaches the state 
through the family. The child is shortly after birth 
carried in the simple rites of the amphidromia around 
the hearth of the home and introduced thereby into 
the society of the family and the family gods. A 
little later it is received with solemn rites and under 
the form of election into the larger circle of the 



336 B.C.] 



Old Greece. 101 



phratry, and by virtue of this membership in the 
phratry is at maturity (in Athens when seventeen 
years of age) enrolled as a member of the deme or 
parish, and so as a citizen of the state and a client 
of those loftier divine personages who guarantee its 
organisation and receive its honours and worship. 

The state, therefore, was wholly religious in its 
character, but not in the sense of those modern 
states which maintain a church, for religion was not 
merely a department of the state; nor yet in the 
sense of Christian Rome, which, following the 
analogy of the spiritual and material constitution 
of the human individual, devised the theory of a 
dualistic state and made the chair of the Bishop of 
Rome the counterpart to the throne of the Caesars. 
This was not so, for in Greece religion was never 
conceived as a phase of the state. Nor yet again 
was religion ever debased, as in pagan Rome, to be 
a mere tool or agency of the state, nor elevated, as 
in Israel, to be the all-containing aim and end thereof. 
Religion simply was the state, and the state was re- 
ligion. Impiety was treason, and all treason in- 
volved impiety. The modern political conception 
of a "profane " state was absolutely inconceivable 
to an ancient Greek. Equally foreign to his con- 
ceptions was that distinction between legality and 
morality, to which the Romans were the first to give 
definite form through their determination of the 
purely legal character of the state. Modern civil 
law, following the lead of the Roman, has regard to 
the existing relations of human society and follow- 
ing the " line of least resistance," seeks by the 



102 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C. 

cleverest available compromises and by practical ex- 
pedients to alleviate as far as possible conflicts of 
interest, and make the conditions of living together 
as tolerable and convenient as possible. In the 
modern state the standard of law does not match 
the higher standard of duty and conscience. Tn the 
primitive Greek state such a divorcement of stand- 
ards was not recognised. The situation may be 
fairly summarised by saying that religion and ethics 
had not yet been differentiated out of the notion of 
politics. 

Utterly at variance with our modern notion of the 
relation of the individual to the state was that which 
had currency in Old Greece. We hold that the state 
exists for the individual, for the protection of his 
interests and to render his powers effective. The 
individual has an existence, a meaning, and a pur- 
pose independent of the state. Bluntschli in his 
Theory of the State thus describes the Teuton's 
conception of his individual right: " He claims for 
himself an inborn right which the state must protect 
but which it does not create, and for which he is 
ready to fight against the whole world, even against 
the authority of his own government. He rejects 
strenuously the old idea that the state is all in all." 
With the ancient Greek the state is prior to the in- 
dividual. It is not an aggregation of individuals, 
and its prerogatives are not the result of concessions 
made to it by individuals. The individual is an 
agency or tool of the state, not the state a conven- 
ience of the individual. " Man is a civic animal," * 

* ItdklTlKOV £(&OV. 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 103 

says Aristotle in his Politics. He was created for 
the state. He is meaningless apart from it. " The 
state or the family," continues Aristotle, "is by 
nature prior to [i. c, the condition of existence for] 
each one of us, for the whole must needs be prior 
to the part. Take away the whole, and the foot or 
the hand has no existence." One who is so con- 
stituted as through self-sufficiency to have no need 
of the state is no man, but must be "either a beast 
or a god." Over the life of the individual, his 
property, his talents, his service, the state possessed, 
as in modern democratic societies only " public 
opinion " can possess, eminent domain. There is 
much talk about the freedom of the individual in 
ancient Athens, but it meant no more, as Friedrich 
puts it well, than " the consciousness of being no 
more subject to force than each and every one of his 
fellow-citizens to the power of the law."* Un- 
doubtedly the exercise of individuality was given 
freer scope at Athens than in any other Greek town, 
notably, for instance, in the much-boasted freedom 
of speech, but in reality anything that may from our 
modern point of view be called individual liberty 
simply did not exist. 

No one was at liberty, for instance, to choose his 
religious faith, to select the gods he would worship, 
or to determine the manner in which he should wor- 
ship them. He must follow the usage of the com- 
munity into which he was born. We say this is not 
fair play. The individual was not consulted as to 
which community he should be born into. Hence 

* Friedrich-Thalheim, Griechische Rechtsaltertkumer, p. 28. 



104 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C.- 

he was under no obligation to worship its gods until 
his free choice had dictated it. But herein lies the 
very difference between the ancient and the modern 
point of view. Ancient society did not consult the 
individual. He had no rights whatsoever, as against 
the state. The laws protected the individual against 
the individual, but not the individual against the 
state. This, and no more than this, it is that De- 
mosthenes in a famous passage * claims to be the 
mission and purpose of the laws (vd/W), not the de- 
fining or guaranteeing, but the equalising of rights: 

" The life of men in its entirety, whether they inhabit 
a great city or a small, is regulated by nature and by 
laws. Of these two, nature is unconventional, incon- 
sistent, and dependent upon the personality of the in- 
dividual in question, whilst the laws are something that 
is universal, definite, and the same to all. Now, nature, 
if it be base, is often minded unto the evil, but the laws 
desire what is just, what is noble, what is profitable, and 
this they search after, and when it has been found, it is 
established as an ordinance of universal validity, equal 
and like unto all men," etc. 

The life of the citizen was under perpetual mort- 
gage to the state for military service, as his property 
was for the needs of the state in times of stress. 
The fundamental purpose of education was con- 
ceived to be the moulding of the individual into 
conformity with his environment, and adaptability 
to the uses of society and the state. Plato's opin- 
ion that the child belongs more to the state than to 

* Demosthenes, Against Aristogeiton, i., sec. 15/*. 



336 B-C] Old Greece. 105 

its parents was but a very slight exaggeration of the 
popular conception. Submission to authority, and 
respect for the powers that be, was the first thing a 
young Athenian had to learn. Menander's maxim, 
" Unflogged, uneducated," enjoyed thereby a large 
adherence. 

The state intruded itself on every side and with- 
out compunction into the domain of private right, 
as private right is understood in Anglo-Saxon com- 
munities to-day. The so-called laws of Solon, in 
dealing with the minutiae of private life, in giving 
directions concerning dress, occupation, funerals, 
etc., were not annexing new territory to the domain 
of the law, but kept doubtless in general to the 
sphere as well as the course of earlier legislation. 
Comparison with the scant reports we have of early 
law codes of other Greek states shows that special 
and sumptuary regulations were especially character- 
istic of them all. Plutarch reports concerning Solon's 
laws : * 

" Regarding the appearance of women upon the street, 
and their participation in funerals and festivals, he made 
regulations suited to prevent everything, loud and im- 
modest. Thus, when they went upon the street they 
were to wear not more than three articles of dress, they 
were to carry with them of food or drink not more than 
an obol's worth, and to bear no basket more than eighteen 
inches deep. They were not to go about at night except 
in a carriage with a torch before them. The bearing 
and disfiguring of the body in lament, the wailing of pro- 



* Plutarch, Solon, ch. xxi. /. 



106 Alexander the Great. [336 b.c- 

fessional mourners, and mourning for anyone at an- 
other's funeral he prohibited. He forbade the offer- 
ing of an ox at the grave, also the burial of more than 
three pieces of raiment with the body, and made it an 
offence to visit the graves of other than one's own family 
except at the very funeral, — the most of which things 
are forbidden by our laws also. . . . He imposed upon 
the council of the Areopagus the obligation of investi- 
gating how each man earned his livelihood and of 
chastening the idle." 

Concerning the Locrians we hear *: 

" Among the Epizephyrian Locrians, if anyone drank 
his wine straight, except as a remedy, and upon the pre- 
scription of a physician, the punishment was death." * 

Again, concerning the Corinthians f : 

"This excellent law exists among the Corinthians : if 
we see anyone dining every day in sumptuous style, we 
examine into his occupation and source of livelihood. 
And if he prove to have property with income sufficient 
to meet the expenditures, he is allowed to continue in 
this style of living, but if he prove to be living beyond 
his means, he is forbidden to continue it." 

A similar tendency is shown by the law of Solon 
forbidding a citizen on pain of disfranchisement to 
abstain from voting in times of political excitement, 
as well as by the institution of ostracism existing in 
various towns, whereby without hearing or trial a 



* Athenaeus, x., p. 429 a. 

\ Athenaeus, vi., p. 227/. (quoted from Diphilos). 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 107 

citizen could be compelled to leave the town for the 
supposed good of the state. Sparta affords in its 
well-known communistic institutions only a fuller 
exemplification of this common and universal theory 
of the Greek constitutions. Plutarch summarises it 
well * : 

"To conclude, he bred up his citizens so that they 
neither wished nor knew how to live by themselves, but 
like the bees, merging their identity always in that of the 
commonwealth, and clustering together around their 
leader, to become in their enthusiasm and public spirit 
all but lifted out of themselves, and for their whole 
being to be their country's." 

The legal relation corresponding to this state of 
the facts may be summarised as follows. The indi- 
vidual as such was not a " subject of equity " ; only 
the state and its parts received such cognisance, and 
it was only as a factor of the state that an individual 
was a subject of rights. That is to say, private law 
had not yet been differentiated from public law, just 
as ethics had not been differentiated from politics. 
This entire attitude of mind concerning the relation 
of the individual to the social and political body was 
a necessary corollary to the prevailing understanding 
of the nature of that body as an enlargement of the 
family relation. With the shifting of view which 
followed upon the disruptions of Alexander's age 
and the consequent rise of the new spirit of cosmo- 
politanism, came of necessity a readjustment in the 
status of the individual, not directly or suddenly, to 

* Plutarch, Lycurgus, ch. xxv. 



108 Alexander the Great. [336 b.c- 

be sure, but as a gradual, though unmistakable, 
transition toward that fuller enunciation of the doc- 
trine of rights which it was the mission of Teutonic 
peoples to infuse into the political thought of mod- 
ern Europe. 

Much is said, and indeed we have already said 
much, about the smallness of the Greek states, and 
their persistent tendency to remain so. We shall 
err greatly, however, if we seek the ultimate causes 
of this in circumstances such as the geographical 
situation, the character of the people, and the 
diversity of tribes. These were the occasions under 
which the cause was operative, and persistently 
operative, but they were not themselves the cause.* 
The Greek states were small, because smallness was 
a principle of their being. They could not have 
become large without a total change of character 
and constitution. Their institutions could not 
tolerate a citizen-list too large for assemblage in one 
town-meeting, or for common participation in the 
festivals of the gods of the state. The range of the 
herald's, the orator's, or the actor's voice fixed in a 
certain sense the limits of the state. The relation 
of the individual citizen to the state was immediate 
and personal. No complicated political mechanism 

* " Doubtless physical nature has some influence upon the history 
of a people, but the beliefs of men have a much more powerful one. 
In ancient times there was something more impassable than mount- 
ains between two neighbouring cities ; there were the series of 
sacred bounds, the difference of worship, and the hatred of the gods 
toward the foreigner. For this reason the ancients were never able 
to establish, or even to conceive of, any other social organisation 
than that of the city." — Coulanges, The Ancient City, p. 270. 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 109 

intervened between him and the questions at issue. 
The statesmen of the day were personally known to 
him; he saw their daily life; he heard them present 
their proposals and make their defences. Political 
information and political doctrine nowhere assumed 
the impersonal garb. The living voice of the orator 
represented the editorial pages of the Times and the 
Tribune ; the comic actor was Puck and Puncli ; the 
sophists were the current reviews. Dangers menac- 
ing the state menaced the individual citizen directly. 
The phenomena of the state were seen and felt. 
Aristotle's discussion of the nature of the state in 
his Politics is not so much theoretical as a generalis- 
ation upon the facts * : 

" Many people seem to think a state must be large in 
order to be prosperous. But in so doing they ignore the 
true nature of a great city and a small one, for they 
identify the great city by the mere number of its inhabit- 
ants, whereas it were meet the rather to regard not 
mass but energy, f for a city has a definite mission, so 
that the one best able to accomplish that must be re- 
garded greatest, just as you would say that Hippocrates 
was a greater, — not man, but physician, than one who 
exceeded him in bodily size. . . . No, a great city and a 
populous city are two very different things. Indeed, the 
facts of history show how hard, yes, how impossible, it is 
for a populous state to be well governed. . . . For what 
general can exercise authority over an army of abnormal 
size, or what herald can make himself heard, if not a 
regular son of Stentor ? . . . For the proper administra- 

* Aristotle, Politics, iv., chap, iv., sec. 3-8 (=: 1326 a). 
f SvvajuiS. 



no Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

tion of justice, and for the distribution of authority, it is 
necessary that the citizens be acquainted with each 
other's characters, so that, where this cannot be, much 
mischief ensues both in the use of authority and in the 
administration of justice ; for it is not just to decide 
arbitrarily, as must be the case with excessive population." 

So, holding himself strictly within the limitations 
of Greek political thought that utterly ignored the 
possibilities of representative or of federative govern- 
ment and of all like forms of political mechanism, 
Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the natural 
" limit to the size of the state must be found in the 
capability of being easily taken in at a glance." * 

It must be clear from the foregoing how unsuited 
was the organisation of the Greek states to the con- 
struction of an Hellenic empire, and what insuperable 
obstacles, indeed, their very existence offered to the 
establishment of any form of central power. So 
long as the old religious theory of the purpose of 
the state maintained itself as a real factor of the 
public consciousness, maintenance of sovereignty 
and maintenance of worship were but two phases 
of the same thing. The merging of two states in 
one was entirely foreign to all the profoundest in- 
stincts of ancient political thought. It might be 
easy to conquer a state, to ravage its fields, lay 
waste its towns, and reduce its population to slavery, 
but to annex it — a thing that never entered into 
the mind of an ancient Greek to conceive — would 
involve for the one party an abandonment of cults 

* EvdvvoitroS. 



336 B.C.I 



Old Greece. 1 1 1 



it was the most sacred duty to maintain, which was 
apostasy ; and for the other an admission of strangers 
to divine fellowship where they had no right and no 
place, which was sacrilege. The only device known 
to the ancient for effecting such a union, the synoi- 
kismos, involved a union of communities through a 
uniting of their cults. In such a union as this we 
know that the Spartan state had its origin,* and so, 
too, around the central rock of the Attic plain, the 
Acropolis had been once in early times brought to- 
gether the sanctuaries and the worships of the differ- 
ent communities that united to form the Athenian 
state. What had, however, in the case of these 
closely related petty parishes been accomplished 
only through a herculean effort of statemanship and 
probably of armed force that had left its recollection 
as the greatest event of early history to be perpetu- 
ally celebrated in the most brilliant of all the Athe- 
nian festivals, the Panathenaea, was too difficult 
a measure to be often repeated, especially when it 
concerned the communities and the more compli- 
cated mechanisms of later days. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that these 
little sovereign communities were never conscious 
of their weakness and isolation, and never sought 
protection and guarantee in any form of union with 
other communities. Treaties were often made be- 
tween states with common political interests or 
threatened by common dangers. These treaties 
sometimes, though not commonly, extended to offen- 
sive as well as defensive cooperation, but they were 

* Gilbert, Studien zur altspartanischen Geschichte, pp. 128 ff. 



112 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C.- 

generally framed in view of a specific emergency, 
whether a menace of external force or a danger of 
internal disorder, and, rarely surviving the occasion 
of their formation, never involved any complete 
surrender of autonomy. 

A more permanent and certainly very ancient 
form of league peculiar to the Greek states is illus- 
trated by the Amphictyonies, of which the earliest 
history reports a considerable number. They ap- 
pear as combinations of a few neighbouring towns 
or tribes for the one distinctive purpose of maintain- 
ing the worship of some temple and the observances 
of its cult, including generally the games and festiv- 
als. Thus seven states, Epidaurus, ^Egina, Her- 
mione, and others in their neighbourhood united in 
the maintenance of the Poseidon cult on the island 
of Calauria in the Saronic gulf. Similarly the wor- 
ship of Apollo at Delphi, of Poseidon at Onchestus 
in Bceotia, of Apollo and Artemis at Delos, and 
others, was guaranteed by such combinations of 
states. These bound themselves to support the 
temple and its festivals, to enforce the truce at the 
time of the festivals, to protect the temple from 
molestation, and to unite in punishing any sacrilege 
committed against it. The opportunity of this 
combination might occasionally lead incidentally to 
the assumption of other functions, as in the case of 
the Delphic Amphictyony, but nothing like a con- 
federation of states resulted from it. Each state 
was entirely free to levy war upon its colleague, so 
long as the festival truce was respected, and, at 
least in the case of the Delphic Amphictyony, the 



336 B.C.I Old Greece. 1 1 3 

simple oath was kept: " We will not destroy any 
Amphictyonic towns; we will not cut off any Am- 
phictyonic town from running water." 

The Delian Confederacy, which came into being in 
the middle of the fifth century and for a time pro- 
mised to be the nucleus of a great Hellenic empire, 
was probably the outgrowth of one of these ancient 
leagues; it certainly was constructed after their 
general pattern, and to this we may attribute the 
fact that it came quietly and naturally into being 
without attracting odium as embodying anything 
foreign to the spirit of Greek institutions. Its real 
political purpose, mutual protection against Persian 
power, was expressed in a religious form as the pro- 
tection of Greek shrines, and preeminently that of 
Apollo at Delos, from the sacrilege of barbarians. 
Athens was originally regarded merely as the admin- 
istrative head of the organisation. Administration, 
however, passed rapidly, though naturally, into dom- 
ination. It was found to be simpler for the lesser 
states to make their contributions in money instead of 
ships. The collection of money often required force, 
and the contribution became a tribute. The treasury 
was removed to Athens and used as Athenian. The 
influence of Athens came to be felt in the political 
institutions of the several states. Its courts, which 
from the first had dealt with questions relating to 
the league, came to be recognised and utilised by 
most of the states as courts of higher or last resort, 
and finally, as if to confirm the league in its position 
as a consolidated state under religious guarantee, 
the allies were encouraged or even required to par- 



114 Alexander the Great. [336B.C- 

ticipate in the Panathenaic festivals and bring offer- 
ings to the temple of Athena. 

And so, in spite of the Greek political traditions, 
and yet by means of them and in harmony with 
them, it seemed as if the way were opened for the 
creation of an imperial state. For this, however, 
the conditions were entirely lacking. Greek politi- 
cal thought could not rise above the city. It could 
not conceive of a city-state so enlarged as to include 
many cities, because it could not conceive of the 
mechanism necessary to the administration of such 
a state. A Greek city could not relinquish its free 
right on the one hand to withdraw from any con- 
federacy it might enter, nor, on the other, to cancel 
or revise any action which its delegates at any coun- 
cil might take, without abandoning its autonomy, 
and between autonomy and servile dependence 
Greek thought knew no mean. 

For the other alternative of empire, the subjection 
of the states to its permanent leadership and rule, 
Athens, as, in fact, all the other Greek cities, was in- 
capacitated by the nature of its institutions. At 
different times in Greek history the preeminence 
now of Sparta, less frequently of Athens, had been 
so far recognised by the other states as to admit of 
their assuming a hegemony or leadership in com- 
bined movements. This was no more than a title 
of precedence. Such a precedence was conceded 
by all the states to Sparta during the Persian wars, 
and was recognised again after the Peloponnesian 
war not only by the states of European Greece, but 
by the Asiatic Greek cities and the court of Persia. 



336 B.c.l Old Greece. 115 

The stronger military and monarchical organisation 
of Sparta gave it in this regard always an advantage 
over Athens, but the selfish narrowness of its policy, 
the provincialism of its population, and its essential 
isolation from the newer thought and larger life that 
was dawning upon Greece in the fourth century 
made it as a permanent leader, to say nothing of 
imperial mastery, an impossibility. Toward empire 
in any larger sense, indeed, Sparta seems never to 
have aspired. When it had levelled the way for 
such a career, it seems to have been satisfied to use 
it only in assuring within the separate cities, chiefly 
by garrisoning their citadels with its troops, a gov- 
ernment, or at least a form of government, in sym- 
pathy with its own. A helpless and hopeless 
conservatism and lack of adaptability held it and its 
schemes unalterably fixed within the barriers of the 
old Greek particularism. Versatile Athens would 
readily have outgrown these, had the nature of its 
political institutions admitted of any consistency or 
security in its foreign policy. Herein lies the real 
cause of its failure to create a Hellenic empire, and 
as this failure proved the chief occasion for the sub- 
sequent career of Macedonia, it is reasonable that in 
closing this chapter we should briefly summarise 
those characteristics of the Athenian governmental 
machinery which affect its capacity for establishing 
and maintaining imperial power. 

The Athenian state possessed no executive de- 
partment. It had neither king, premier, nor presi- 
dent. The functions of the executive were variously 
fulfilled by three different factors of the government ; 



n6 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C.- 

the town-meeting (ekklesia), the council (boiili), and 
the board of generals (strategoi). The sovereign 
power was in the completest sense lodged in the 
town-meeting. Almost every form of public ques- 
tion was settled directly by its vote. It passed 
general laws and special bills, elected public officials, 
admitted to citizenship, determined war and peace, 
voted on the size of armies and on the equipment 
of fleets, appointed the leaders of expeditions and 
heard their reports, voted money and determined 
methods of raising it, received the reports of the 
financial officials, concluded treaties, appointed em- 
bassies and listened to their reports, received and 
listened to the ambassadors of foreign states, and 
transacted a mass of miscellaneous business for 
which the forty regular meetings a year, as was the 
usage in the fourth century, seldom sufficed. 

The device of representative government was un- 
known. The town-meeting was composed of the 
entire citizen body. As the great majority of the 
citizens lived, however, in the country districts, 
seldom more than five thousand, as Thucydides 
tells us,* ever met at one time. So the burden of 
political participation fell naturally upon the citizen 
population of Athens, and its harbour town, the 
Peiraeus ; — and they were mostly well-seasoned po- 
litical characters, many of whom made it a livelihood 
to gather in the various fees that accrued for service 
on juries, and in the council, and for attendance at 
the town-meetings. f Except as we take into ac- 

* Thucydides, viii., 72. 

f This last only in the fourth century. 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 1 1 7 

count this Athenian habit of political dissipation, 
the practicability of these peculiar institutions is to 
us, in an age of specialised activities, totally incon- 
ceivable. Much as a modern New Yorker or Chica- 
goan cultivates an interest in all the details and 
finesse of the game of base-ball, and the standing 
of rival teams, so the ancient urban Athenian was a 
crank and enthusiast in the details of current politics 
and law, the pending bills, the latest speech, the 
manners and style of the orators, the strange dress 
and demeanour of foreign ambassadors, the marvel- 
lous stories of returned commissioners, the reports 
of victorious generals, new plans for a fleet and for 
the building of docks at the Peiraeus, the programmes 
of parties, the policies of statesmen, and the tricks 
of politicians. 

Yet in spite of this, the town-meeting was not a 
body from which legislation in accordance with a 
permanent and consistent policy was to be expected. 
Opportunism was the prevailing policy. The ap- 
peal, as in the courts, was to the plain judgment, or 
too often the sentiment, of the meeting, rather than 
to precedent or constitutional standards. A consti- 
tution existed only in the form of the loosely codi- 
fied body of general laws (noinoi), which were open 
to proposals for amendment at the first meeting of 
each year. The proposal of any measure conflicting 
with these laws exposed the mover to punishment. 
They formed, however, but a very insignificant 
check upon the inconsistencies of special legislation 
and the opportunism of the popular impulse. The 
town-meeting was evidently too cumbrous a body 



1 1 8 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c.- 

for the initiation of legislation, and it was therefore 
not only a wise but a necessary provision that a 
measure which was to be discussed and voted upon 
in the meeting must be brought before it as a part 
of the order of business regularly prepared for it by 
the council (boule). The council was essentially a 
committee for the transaction of the current busi- 
ness of the state, such as in well-governed modern 
states is left to the care of permanent officials. The 
most of its work was done by an executive com- 
mittee of fifty members representing a single tribe, 
and holding office for thirty-five or thirty-six 
days. 

It possessed a certain political significance, but 
this it was the tendency to restrict rather than en- 
large, as is shown by an innovation of the fourth 
century, removing from the executive committee 
(prytany) the right of supplying the presiding 
officer for the town-meeting. Had the office of 
councillor been elective and of more permanent 
tenure, it is conceivable that the council might have 
become the executive department of the state, but, 
as it was, it formulated no foreign policy and con- 
tributed little to the much-needed coordination of 
the governmental activities. 

There was evidently no hope of arriving at a con- 
sistent state policy through the medium of either of 
these bodies, the town-meeting or the council. 
What opportunity was there of giving the power of 
the state expression through the voice and arm of a 
single man ? The kingship was long since abolished, 
and the memory of it a popular bugbear. The 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 119 

archonship which succeeded it, divided into nine 
offices filled by lot, had sunk into an effete and 
ornamental respectability. The constitution pro- 
vided for no dictatorship like the Roman to repre- 
sent the state in times of emergency. The democracy 
suspected the prominence of individuals, and had 
provided the institution of ostracism, which, during 
the fifth century B.C., while the ghost of monarchism 
still haunted the troubled dreams of the masses, 
served as a quasi safety-valve. 

In this condition of things the only avenue open 
for the development of personal leadership was the 
generalship. This was in its original purpose a 
purely military office, but in the course of time the 
necessities of practical administration had given it 
a large sphere of influence in the arena of politics. 
The ten generals (strategoi) were elected annually 
by popular vote, and as this was the only prominent 
office so filled, its personnel was naturally the strong- 
est and most efficient of all. The exigencies of milit- 
ary and naval affairs excused in the eyes of the people 
the personal prominence of the incumbents, and 
they were conceded the important privileges of con- 
sultation with the council, of precedence in address- 
ing the town-meeting, and of convoking at pleasure 
special sessions of this meeting. The large range of 
their responsibilities, including proposals for the rais- 
ing and equipment of troops, the building and man- 
ning of ships, the provision of ways and means, 
the inspection of the financial situation, propo- 
sitions regarding war and peace, continual watch- 
fulness concerning the plans and movements of 



120 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

foreign powers, and conference with foreign lega- 
tions, gave to the political position of this board in 
the fifth century B.C., the nearest approach to the 
significance of a government cabinet under the 
headship of a premier that Athenian institutions 
were ever capable of developing. 

It was as the leading figures in this board that in 
their turn men like Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, 
Cleon, Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, rose to leadership 
in the state. The specialisation, however, of the 
military function, or, as we should call it, the de- 
velopment of the military profession, differentiated 
in the following century between the political and 
military activities, and, throwing the generalship into 
the hands of men like Chabrias, destroyed the politi- 
cal promise of the office. From that time it was 
either the orators as semi-professional politicians, 
or the incumbents of the newly developed office of 
Lord of the Treasury, who exercised the most 
prominent personal influence in politics. It was 
through this latter office that Eubulus, Demos- 
thenes, and Lycurgus became in their time leaders 
of public policy, but Eubulus was never a premier 
in the sense nor to the extent that Pericles was. 
With the decay of the political prominence of the 
generalship, the last hope of the emergence of a 
cabinet and premier out of the jumble of Athenian 
official institutions disappeared forever. The days 
of the leadership of Pericles were the only days 
when Athens was the possessor of a consistent and 
continuous public policy, and Pericles attained his 
power not through the exercise of the functions of 




DEMOSTHENES. 

FROM THE STATUE IN THE VATICAN. ROME. 



336 B.C.] Old Greece. 1 2 1 

any recognised public office, but through extra- 
constitutional organisation. He was a boss. 

The incapacity of the Athenian state for the per- 
manent exercise of imperial functions must now be 
tolerably clear. There was no premier, no cabinet. 
There was no chance for a " government " to gain 
a firm existence. Incessant responsibility to the 
fluctuating moods of a town-meeting was infinitely 
worse than even the parliamentary responsibility of 
the ministry in modern France. The executive 
functions were nowhere classified out of the mass of 
general governmental functions. Each of the bodies 
in its way took a hand in foreign affairs. No office 
or board existed that could serve to coordinate their 
activities. There was no opportunity for any con- 
sistent and permanent public or foreign policy to 
develop itself, which either allies and foreign courts 
could trust, or enemies could fear. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 
404-338 B.C. 

IT remains for us now, before continuing the story 
of Alexander's life, briefly to summarise the 
political history of the last days of that older 
and most typical form of Greek life, whose salient 
characteristics we endeavoured in the two preceding 
chapters to present. 

A review of the events of this period, while detain- 
ing us still outside the limits of Alexander's life, is 
yet all-essential to an understanding on the one hand 
of the conditions which made his career possible, and 
on the other of the way in which the Macedonian 
Empire yielded, for the difficulties inherent in the 
old system of political organisation, a natural and 
not a violent solution. 

The turmoils of the Peloponnesian war (431-404 
B.C.) closed the record of the fifth century B.C. Its 
storm and stress had brought the tendencies of that 
period to a rapid solution. The " century of 
poetry " passd directly into the " century of 

122 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century, 



prose." The literary ideals of the fifth century B.C. 
expressed themselves through the great tragedians, 
of the fourth through Plato and Demosthenes. The 
exuberant naivete of the olden time was checked. 
The understanding gained upon the imagination. 
Life and thought seemed to be sobered. Greece 
had come to its years of discretion. Men were 
settling down to plain dealing with the plain facts 
of life. 

The political atmosphere was cleared. We hear 
no more of the old conflict between the aristocrats 
and the democrats. Popular sovereignty was estab- 
lished as an unquestioned principle. The orderly 
mechanism of the civil government and of the courts 
had asserted itself, and the romantic days of mob- 
rule and violence were over. War, too, had lost its 
romance. Military service, except in garrison duty 
and home defence, passed gradually into the hands of 
the professional soldiery, the mercenaries. After the 
year 424 B.C., no native Athenian army, unsupported 
by mercenaries or troops of other states, ever vent- 
ured into the field. The arts and practices of peace- 
ful life occupied more and more the attention of the 
cities. Athens was developing into a busy manu- 
facturing town. Trade and intercourse by land as 
well as sea increased. 

In continental Greece, Corinth and Athens were 
the great centres of internationalism. Not only did 
merchants, diplomats, and travellers frequently visit 
them, but immigrants from the other states and even 
from non-Greek lands seeking a livelihood and at- 
tracted by the allurements of urban life, came thither 



1 24 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C.- 

in great numbers to make their home. In Athens 
the retail trade passed largely into the hands of 
these aliens, who by the end of the fourth century B.C. 
constituted nearly one third of the free population. 
The intermixture of population and the predomin- 
ance of material interests availed seriously to modify 
the ambition of the Athenian state, and what took 
place at Athens was coming also to pass, even if 
more slowly, throughout all the Greek communities. 
The tendency of public interest in the various com- 
munities was to make things snug and comfortable 
about them at home, and as the fourth century B.C. 
progressed it became apparent that sober-minded 
people were wearying of the old imperial question, at 
least as stated in its old form. So often and at such 
sacrifices had it been brought near to a solution, and 
so often had men been disappointed, that now the 
conviction of its utter hopelessness began almost 
unconsciously to shape itself in the public mind, and 
the efforts of statesmanship came more and more to 
concern themselves with adjustments of the balance 
of power upon the basis of the status quo. 

At Athens the radical democracy, composed of 
the lower orders of the citizen population, continued 
to represent the strongest adherence to the old policy 
of acquiring or asserting Athenian leadership in 
Greek affairs by force of arms. War against Sparta, 
as the old-time enemy of democratic government, 
was always popular with them, and war in general 
was more likely to meet with their approval, seeing 
that, as a rule, they had nothing to pay and little to 
lose. Another reason for this state of things is also 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century, 125 

to be found in the selfish interest of the popular 
leaders, whose political purposes were often best 
advanced under cover of the excitement of a war. 
Certain it is that the various wars of the earlier part 
of the fourth century B.C. owed their chief political 
support to this party of the extreme Left, and that 
when their fruitlessness or ill-success finally made 
them unpopular, they always received their quietus 
under a conservative reaction in politics. 

The one important key to a correct understanding 
of the political situation which preceded the estab- 
lishment of the Macedonian supremacy, and of the 
conditions under which a Macedonian and an anti- 
Macedonian party could divide the political arena 
during the eventful years between the peace of Phi- 
lokrates (346 B.C.) and the battle of Ch?eronea (338 
B.C.), is to be found in the essential continuation of 
the same political dualism of which we are treating. 
Demosthenes and his associates, Hegesippus, Lycur- 
gus, Hypereides, as leaders of the popular party, in 
opposition to the party of the Moderates, repre- 
sented by Eubulus, Phocion, and ^schines, were 
the direct political heirs of the great democratic 
leaders of the preceding seventy-five years, of Cleon, 
Alcibiades, Cephalas, Agyrrhius, and Callistratus. 
The sequence of political history was unbroken ; 
however much the issues might seem changed in 
form, they remained in substance the same. 

Although, in the absence of anything like party 
organisation, it is impossible to speak of Athenian 
parties with the definiteness which attaches to the 
word party in modern political history, still it may 



126 Alexander the Great. [404 B.c- 

in a general way be said that what came toward the 
middle of the century to be regarded as the Mace- 
donian party was essentially the old Moderate or 
Tory party adapted to the particular issues presented 
by the times. The underlying principle of its polit- 
ical policy and the point of view which condition its 
attitude toward all public questions embodied an 
assertion of the ancient particularism in the form of 
persistent opposition to all warlike schemes of im- 
perial aggrandisement. 

It may reasonably be called " the peace party," 
because at all crises when public opinion was divided 
it was found to favour peace, — not peace, however, 
for its own sake so much as that a policy of war in 
the interest of foreign influence or imperial power 
conflicted with the very fundamental idea of the 
state and of its mission and possibilities which the 
citizens of this adherence, the more cautious and 
conservative elements of the population, entertained. 
It was in this sense that during the whole period 
from " Liberal " Pericles and " Tory " Nicias to 
" Liberal " Demosthenes and " Tory " Eubulus the 
peace party was essentially a conservative party. 

Historical accounts of this period, which, following 
the naive style of the chroniclers in classifying all 
kings as " good " kings or " bad " kings, boldly 
represent to us ^Eschines and Eubulus as traitors to 
their fatherland and Demosthenes as the ideal 
patriot, make indeed easy work of the matter, and 
adapt it finely for mnemonic purposes, but commit 
the twofold historical sin of interpreting ancient 
conditions in the light of modern ideas, and of at- 



338 B ,CJ Political Ideas of Foil rth Century. 1 2 7 

tributing to the partisan utterances of a single faction 
during a bitter partisan contest the serious value of 
historical documents. 

It will assist us in appreciating the conservative 
point of view of this period with regard to the mis- 
sion and functions of the state, if we take some 
account among other things of a remarkable mono- 
graph on the finances of the Athenian state written 
about this time * by a representative of the " Tory " 
party, apparently by the historian Xenophon. It is 
a little tract that can be printed upon fifteen duo- 
decimo pages. Its propositions are naively crude, 
as belongs to its place in the very infancy of system- 
atic national finance. We have no reason to believe 
that any of its specific suggestions were carried into 
effect, but it is with a theory of the state, which 
they plainly presuppose, that we are concerned. 

The work issues from the discouraging times of 
the secession of the allies, Byzantium, Rhodes, Cos, 
and Chios (357-355 B.C.), and opens substantially 
with this question : Is the imperial system of collect- 
ing tribute from our allies, which has earned us so 
much odium, really the only resource for the main- 
tenance of our citizens ? Cannot a scheme be de- 
vised by which they shall " acquire their living from 
their own state ? " The author begins his discus- 
sion of the question with a review of the unique 
advantages connected with the geographical position 
of Attica: its climate, its variety of agricultural pro- 



* Xenophon, On the Revenues {De Vectigalibus), written about 
35 0- 355 B .c. Cf. Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, p. 8 6g8 
( 8 778), Anna. d. 



128 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C.- 

duct, the fish supplies off its coast, its stores of 
marble and mineral, its immunity from invasions, 
its convenience to trade. 

" Not without reason," he says, " might one conject- 
ure that the city is placed at the very centre of Greece, 
indeed of the habitable world, for the farther one goes 
from it, the severer the cold or the heat one finds, and 
all who essay to travel from one extreme of Greece to the 
other, must needs whether in ship or on land pass by 
Athens as the centre of a circle." 

Its harbours, as well as if it were an island, can be 
entered or quitted with every wind, and its position 
on the mainland renders it also accessible to overland 
trade. 

If now, our author argues, shrewd advantage were 
taken of these natural endowments, the state might 
be made the means of earning a support for all its 
citizens. In the first place, it could do much by en- 
couraging foreigners {luetics) to settle in the city, 
" for these people, while supporting themselves and 
bringing to the city much advantage, exact no hire, 
but on the contrary yield an income through the tax 
they pay " (referring to the special tax levied upon 
resident aliens). But he carries his state-socialism 
farther, and proceeds to develop a scheme for utilis- 
ing the state as a species of investment company, 
and especially recommends the investment in slaves 
to work the mines, in merchant vessels, in store- 
houses and exchanges for importers and exporters, 
in shops and booths for retailers, and in inns for the 
entertainment of travellers. He is not as definite 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century. 129 

as we might wish regarding the financial details of 
his plan, but from the three illustrations of its work- 
ings he offers us, we infer that, while the investments, 
like the ancient special levies (leitourgiai) and modern 
doctor's bills, were to vary according to individual 
fortunes, yet the profits were to be the same to all. 
These latter were, however, planned for so gener- 
ously, that even the larger investors were likely to 
be perfectly satisfied. We give his own words: 

11 Nothing would bring them so good returns as the 
money advanced to this fund. For whoever contributes 
ten minas,* receives, reckoning three obols a day, nearly 
one-fifth profit (3 obols X 360 = 1080 obols = if minas) ; 
whoever contributes five minas, more than one-third 
(#. e., on 5 minas invested \\ minas income). But the 
majority of the citizens will receive in a year more than 
they contribute, for those who advance one mina will 
have nearly two minas income; and that, too, with the 
state, which is of all human things the most secure and 
abiding." 

In each of these illustrations it will be seen that a 
normal daily income of three obols (eight cents) is 
provided for, whatever the investment. This norm- 
al sum is doubtless chosen in reference to the 
customary three-obol fee for attendance at the courts 
and the town-meeting. This brings Xenophon's 

* It is of little help to be informed that the comparative intrinsic 
value of ten minas is about $162 (or ^33 6s. 8d.). Some suggestion 
of the multiple to be employed in estimating its real equivalence 
may be obtained from the fact that the wages of skilled labour at 
this time seldom exceeded 25 cents (— u.) a day, and it was possible 
for a person to subsist on 6-8 cents (= 3-4^.) a day. 
9 



130 Alexander the Great. [404 B.c- 

scheme into an evident relation with the current 
policy of the conservative party as represented at 
that time by Eubulus. It is further to be noticed 
that the sum of three obols constituted a reasonable 
allowance for the cost of subsistence of an individual. 
Two obols was the common food allowance for 
soldiers and sailors. 

For the complete success of this scheme, finally, 
Xenophon urges that the state must be assured of 
continuous peace, and to this end proposes some- 
thing very like a board of arbitration. All the ex- 
perience of the past and all the probabilities for the 
future point to the conclusion that a condition of 
peace is more favourable to the growth and prosper- 
ity of Athens than war. After showing how every- 
body would be better off, and everybody hold a 
higher estimate of the real greatness of Athens, he 
turns to those " who, in their desire to regain for 
the city the leadership of Greece, believe this would 
be accomplished better through war than through 
peace," and shows them by reference to the history 
of their past how it had always been through the 
achievements and the methods of peace that Athens 
had won her largest influence in Hellenic affairs. 
Her empire in the islands founded in peace and by 
the methods of peace had been lost through a 
policy of war and through methods of warlike con- 
straint. Surely the facts of history offer no gainsay 
to this opinion of Xenophon, that the " finger of 
Providence " indicated the mission of Athens to lie 
along the paths of peace rather than on the field of 
war. Popular history would fain make military 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century. 1 3 1 

heroes of the Athenians, but the odds are all against 
it. 

In the years immediately following the publication 
of Xenophon's pamphlet, Eubulus was destined to 
give a practical exemplification of the benefits ac- 
cruing to Athens from a policy of non-intervention, 
that is, from a policy which restricted war to pur- 
poses of defence and directed supreme attention to 
material interests at home. Eubulus's political lead- 
ership was exercised peculiarly in the field of finance, 
and not, as was usual, through the office of general, 
but through the newly created office of treasurer of 
the distribution fund. A man of unimpeachable 
integrity and of untiring energy, and a financial 
genius of creative ability, he enjoyed the confidence 
of citizens like Phocion who constituted the soldier 
elements of society. On assuming office shortly 
after the close of the disastrous Social War (357-355 
B.C.) he found the treasury utterly depleted. He 
left it after fifteen years in a condition that made 
possible the final effort against Philip as well as the 
brilliant administration of the succeeding treasurer, 
Lycurgus. The fleet had been doubled, public 
buildings repaired, roads built, aqueducts laid, naval 
storehouses and shelters for the ships erected, and 
various public works begun. It is of these, rather 
for the policy they represent, that Demosthenes 
speaks in his Third Olynthiac (349 B.C.) with such 
partisan disgust: 

" Come, now, let some one arise and tell me by whose 
help than our own Philip has grown strong. ' Oh yes, I 



132 Alexander the Great. [404 B.c- 

admit [answers the supposed opponent], but yet the con- 
dition of things in the town is improved.' Well, now, 
what would one have to cite ? The parapets we 've 
whitewashed and the roads we 've patched and fountains 
and — fooleries ? " 

It is not in absolute defence of the policy of 
Eubulus that we introduce this discussion here, but 
rather to show that the " peace policy " was not, as 
it is often and even usually represented, either a 
special and temporary outgrowth of the times or 
an end unto itself, but was part of a perfectly self- 
consistent and permanent policy grounding itself in 
a consistent and intelligible conception of the state 
and its mission. Isocrates, in a political essay en- 
titled On the Peace, which appeared probably in the 
same year (356 or 355 B.C.) with Xenophon's On the 
Revenues, not only recommends the discontinuance 
of the war against the seceding allies, but bases his 
policy of non-coercion upon general rather than 
temporary considerations. He shows how the greed 
for imperial power has been the source of manifold 
evils not only for Athens but for Sparta as well. 
The debasement of the democracy at Athens is a 
direct result of the perversion of the state from its 
original purpose to one for which its institutions 
were unfitted. 

" I believe," he says, " that we shall govern our city 
better and shall be better ourselves and make better ad- 
vance in all our endeavours, if we give up our ambition 
for a maritime empire. For it is that which has brought 
us into our present unrest and has undermined that form 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century. 133 

of popular government under which our forefathers were 
the happiest of the Greeks." * 

No wonder that the uncompromising directness of 
this proposal called forth from one of the radical 
party a rejoinder, which, however, we only know 
from its title, Isocrates Driving Athenians from the 
Sea. 

That the desire for peace and opposition to aggres- 
sive military operations had constituted for a century 
before this the normal attitude of the conservatives 
is known to every reader of the history of the fifth 
century B.C. What was present as a settled doctrine 
in the essays of Xenophon and Isocrates was a no less 
settled instinct in the Acharnians of Aristophanes. 
The cultivation of peaceful relations with Sparta was 
always a plank of the Tory platform, for this meant 
opposition to the aggressive foreign policy of the 
Jingoist Liberals. The opposition of Nicias to 
Cleon in the last third of the century reflected in 
this regard that of Aristides to Themistocles in the 
first. 

It remains for us now to consider briefly the 
historical connections of what might be called the 
" socialistic " traits of Eubulus's policy. While it 
is evident that the tendency to look to the state for 
material benefits, especially in the form of largesses, 
had shown itself in a more marked and more danger- 
ous form under the administration of Eubulus, it is 
equally certain that the practice of distributing 
money to the people on fete-days had its origin in 

* Isocrates, On the Peace, ch. xxi. 



134 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C-- 

the preceding century, under one of the popular 
leaders, Cleophon * or Pericles, f and had become a 
regular usage sanctioned by leaders of both parties. 
Payment for service on juries and in the council 
dates from Pericles, and for attendance on the town- 
meeting from about 393 B.C., but the idea underlying 
it is much older. 

The history of the idea that Athenians might em- 
ploy their citizenship as a means or opportunity for 
a livelihood has received a most important contribu- 
tion in the recently discovered Politeia of Aristotle. 
To Aristeides " the Just " is attributed the origina- 
tion of a plan (477 B.C.) whereby the citizens might 
live from the state through remuneration for public 
service. % 

" And for the masses they [the Athenians] provided, 
in accordance with Aristeide's proposition, an ample 
means of subsistence. It resulted in there being more 
than twenty thousand supported from the tribute, the 
taxes, and the various contributions of the allies. There 
were the six thousand jurors, sixteen hundred bowmen, 
and the twelve hundred horsemen, then the council of 
the five hundred, the five hundred guards at the dock- 
yards and the fifty guards on the acropolis, further some 
seven hundred officials within the country and as many 
more without; besides this, when later they became in- 
volved in war, two thousand five hundred hoplites, ten 
cruisers, and ten other ships employed to convey the two 
thousand soldiers drawn for garrison duty, and finally 

* Aristotle, Politeia, ch. xxviii. 
f Plutarch, Pericles, ch. ix. 
\ Aristotle, Politeia, ch. xxiv. 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Centziry. 135 

the pensioners at the Prytaneum, the orphans, and the 
prison-keepers. All these were dependent on the com- 
monwealth. So it was that the populace came to subsist 
from the state." 

It is worthy of notice in this connection that ac- 
cording both to Herodotus * and Aristotle f the 
Athenians after the discovery of the silver mines in 
Laurion (483 B.C.) were about to divide among the 
citizens the accumulated earnings which sufficed for 
a dividend of ten drachmas per man, when Themis- 
tocles interposed and managed by clever politics to 
divert the money to the building of a fleet. The 
combination of these fragmentary reports not only 
throws new light upon the political differences be- 
tween Themistocles and Aristeides, but offers us in 
some sense a rude counterpart or dim foreshadowing 
of the issue joined a hundred and thirty years later 
between Demosthenes and Eubulus. 

Propositions such as that of Xenophon, that the 
state should invest largely in slaves, involved nothing 
revolutionary in theory. They arose naturally out 
of the ancient idea of the state as a community, and 
representing as they did an application of that idea 
to the special conditions of life in the fourth century 
B.C., constituted an essentially conservative position. 
Athens was not the only state where such plans 
were devised. Aristotle, in his Politics, % tells us 
that at Epidamnus all public service was performed 

* Herodotus, vii., 144. 

f Aristotle, Politeia, ch. xxii. 

\ Aristotle, Politics, ii., ch. vii.. sec. 13 (1267 b). 



136 Alexander the Great. [404 B.c- 

by state slaves, and that Diophantes, whom we 
know to have been a contemporary and partisan 
of Eubulus, proposed the same plan for Athens. 
Phaleas of Chalcedon, who demanded for all citizens 
likeness of property and uniformity of education, 
went further and proposed that all the labour neces- 
sary for private or public life should be performed 
by public slaves. The Helots of Sparta, whose 
labour enabled the members of the citizen class to 
devote themselves exclusively to the service and de- 
fence of the state, were the property of the state. 
Similar was in Crete the position of the Mnoitai, or 
public serfs, who tilled the commons of the various 
communities. At Athens shortly after the battle 
of Salamis, a police force consisting of three hundred 
public slaves was organised, and later this number 
was increased to twelve hundred. Slaves were also 
largely employed in the public offices as clerks and 
accountants, and the executioners, torturers, and 
labourers in the mint appear to have been of this 
class. At Sparta the communistic idea was em- 
bodied in the most strikingly peculiar form, a prom- 
inent feature of which was the daily common meal 
in which all citizens were compelled to participate. 
The primitive sacrificial feast of the community, of 
which this was a development, survived at Athens 
in the form of the daily meal of state officials at the 
Prytaneum. 

In another important regard the position of the 
conservatives conformed to the older conception of 
the state. The old Greek communities were by 
very nature, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, 



338 B.C.] Political Ideas of Fourth Century. 137 

essentially particularistic. Neither in theory nor in 
fact were they suited to exercise imperial domination 
the one over the other, though the leadership of one 
was possible. The natural conditions were accur- 
ately represented in the relation of merely filial at- 
tachment through a moral and not a legal tie which 
the earlier colonies held to the parent-state. It was 
the final defeat of Athens's attempts to found her 
island empire on principles entirely at variance with 
this old-time idea, that encouraged conservatives 
like Isocrates * to advocate an empire founded not 
on force, but on respect and good will. 

If the analysis of the political situation which we 
have here in outline attempted be in general correct, 
it is apparent that the conservative elements became 
in the vexed times of 350 to 340 B.C. a '* Macedon- 
ian party," not through any wilful and satanic desire 
to " betray their fatherland," but simply through a 
consistent and natural application of their political 
principles, such as they were, to the existing politi- 
cal situation. 



* Cf. Isocrates, On the Peace, ch. ix. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LAST DAYS OF THE OLD GREEK POLITICAL 
SYSTEM. 

404-355 B.C. 

BY the middle of the fourth century B.C. it became 
apparent that the hope of creating a great 
Hellenic state out of a series of petty tribal 
republics was utterly vain, and it was equally certain 
that the old system of autonomous city-states had 
been hopelessly outgrown in the rapidly extending 
cosmopolitanism of the age. The city-state no 
longer represented the facts. When these states 
refused either to combine or to submit to the leader- 
ship of one, the natural historical solution was found 
in the supremacy of a state hitherto regarded as 
outside the Greek circle, but in which the preserva- 
tion of the ancient institution of the kingship offered 
the means of a strong and continuous personal leader- 
ship to meet the evident lack and the convenient 
opportunity of the times. The advent of Philip 
signified the restoration to the Greek political sys- 
tems of that ancient institution of the kingship, 

138 



355 B.C.] The Old Greek Political System. 1 39 

which Rome had for emergencies preserved in the 
form of the dictatorship, but which the Greek repub- 
lics had lost. 

Let us briefly summarise the course of events 
which mark the last days of the old Greek system. 
The close of the Peloponnesian war (404 B.C.) 
ended the political dualism of Sparta vs. Athens. 
For a decade after, it seemed as if the supremacy of 
Sparta was impregnably established, but the narrow- 
ness of her policy created a reaction, and an uprising 
of the other states ensued (394 B.C.). During the 
war that followed (394-387 B.C.) Persian influence 
was against Sparta as the stronger, but the peace of 
Antalcidas (387 B.C.) which established the autono- 
my of the states on the basis of the status quo, was 
brought about through the transfer of that influence 
to the side of Sparta. In fact until the appearance 
of Philip the pitiful debility of the individual states 
allowed Persia to maintain consistently the balance 
of weakness among them. In 378 B.C. Thebes and 
Athens unite in war against Sparta (378-371 B.C.). 
Athens renews her empire in the islands. Thebes 
takes rank as a first-class power. 

Three states are now matched for the leadership. 
By the victory of Thebes at Leuctra (371 B.C.) and 
the consequent development of the Arcadian cities, 
Sparta is permanently stricken from the list of Hel- 
lenic powers and reduced to the grade of a Pelopon- 
nesian state. Thebes rises to a brief preeminence 
that ends with Mantinea and the death of Epamin- 
ondas (362 B.C.). Philip ascends the throne in 359 
B.C. Two years later (357 B.C.) the chief allies of 



140 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C.- 

Athens revolt, and while her attention is occupied 
in the war that follows (357-355 B.C.), Philip opens 
his domain to the sea by seizing the harbour towns 
Pydna (357 B.C.) and Potidsea (356 B.C.). From 
357 to 346 B.C. Athens is engaged in a desultory 
war with Philip, nominally for the possession of 
Amphipolis, but really in a broader sense for the 
maintenance of Athenian influence in the coast- 
towns of the north. 

With the end of the Social War (355 B.C.) the 
political situation is as follows: Philip in the four 
years he had been upon the throne had firmly estab- 
lished his government at home by suppressing inter- 
nal factions, had secured his frontiers to the north 
and north-west by conquering the Paeonians and 
Illyrians, and had made himself a factor in Hellenic 
politics by acquiring a seacoast and asserting his 
influence among the Greek settlements on the Chal- 
cidian and Thracian coast of the Northern ^Egean. 
Though but twenty-seven years of age his fame as 
an ambitious, intelligent, forceful political organiser 
and leader of men was spread far and wide through- 
out the Grecian world. 

Thebes occupied a certain preeminence among the 
lesser communities of Central Greece, the Boeotians, 
Phocians, Locrians, and Malians, but since the death 
of Epaminondas (362 B.C.) lacked able leadership, 
and was generally distrusted and detested by the 
other Greeks. 

Sparta, environed in the Peloponnesus by rivals 
old and new, — Argos, Megalopolis, Messene, — could 
scarcely maintain herself at home, and in national 



338 B.C.] The Old Greek Political System. 141 

affairs was no longer a name to be conjured with. 
Athens had just lost her allies, and, as we have 
seen, was in no mood for an aggressive foreign 
policy. The assassination of Alexander, the tyrant 
of Pherae (359 B.C.), had removed the only form of 
central power in Thessaly, and plunged the country 
in intestine strifes, which made it six years later an 
easy prey to Philip. In nothing is the weakness of 
the older centres of power, Sparta, Athens, Thebes, 
more clearly shown than in the emergence upon the 
field of history of the lesser states — Phocis, Locris, 
Elis, Messenia, Arcadia, Argos, Corinth. Greece 
was utterly disorganised. It had resolved itself 
again into its " prime factors." Never had the 
question of nationality seemed so far from a solution. 
To add to the general disaster there began in 355 
B.C. the " Sacred War" between Thebes, leading 
the lesser states of the Amphictyonic league, on 
the one side, and Phocis, with the moral support of 
Sparta and Athens, on the other. Its chief histor- 
ical importance, however, lies in the fact that by a 
chance combination of events it involved Philip 
directly in the affairs of central Greece. One of 
the hostile factions in Thessaly had called in his aid. 
The opposite faction obtained the support of the 
Phocians, thus extending the Sacred War to the 
soil of Thessaly and making Philip one of the par- 
ties involved, and, what is more, enabling him to 
pose as the defender of the national sanctuary at 
Delphi, which the Phocians were regarded as having 
despoiled. After bringing Thessaly entirely under 
his power and after having made a vain attempt to 



142 Alexander the Great. [404B.C- 

enter Greece by Thermopylae (352 B.C.) he with- 
drew, but, as Curtius expresses it, " He had thrown 
the bridge across into Hellas, and calmly awaited 
till the hour should come for crossing it." 

The war against Philip was continued by Athens 
in a half-hearted way until, after the fall of Olynthus 
(347 B.C.), it gradually became clear to men of all 
parties not only that the war was now purposeless 
and hopeless, but that in the entire political isola- 
tion of Athens an understanding with Philip was 
the better part of valour. Demosthenes, who at 
the time had a seat in the council, at first joined 
heartily with the conservatives in the movement for 
peace, and was indeed leader * of the envoys sent 
to confer with Philip. The events which followed 
directly upon the enactment of the peace (346 B.C.), 
especially Philip's summary dealings with the Pho- 
cians and his assumption of a commanding influence 
in Greek affairs given him by his newly acquired 
position in the Amphictyonic league, wrought a 
rapid change of opinion at Athens. Despite all 
Philip's attempts to show his friendliness to Athens, 
a friendliness which he afterwards on at least two 
occasions amply proved by sparing the city when it 
lay at his mercy, the anti-Macedonian sentiment 
rapidly revived, under what seemed the immediate 
presence of an appalling danger. 

Demosthenes was the head and front of the 
movement. He was a man of intensity, seriousness, 
and eminent singleness of purpose, — one of those 

* ^Eschines, Oration on Embassy, sec. 108 ; cf. Schaefer, Demos-, 
thenes mid seine Zeit, ii., 241. 



338 B.C.] The Old Greek Political System. 143 

men who see no hope for the world except it be 
organised upon their own favourite plan. By birth 
and association he belonged naturally to the party 
of " the respectables," but the bitter experiences of 
his early days, especially the litigation with his 
guardians, had not only given a tone of sombre 
seriousness to his whole character, but had served, 
it seems, to alienate him from the political circles 
to which his guardians had belonged and to press 
him into the ranks of the radicals. That he was a 
patriot no one can doubt. That his patriotism was 
often mistaken in detail, if not entirely in outline, 
is equally beyond doubt. The one objective point 
of his policy was to crush Philip. To this he was 
willing to sacrifice everything. He was unable to 
see that the purposes for which Athens existed as a 
state might be accomplished through an alliance 
with Philip. In his thought the primacy of Macedon 
and the extinction of liberty were absolutely insepar- 
able. Although in his oration On the Peace (346 B. c.) 
he opposed, in view of the existing isolation of 
Athens, the immediate resumption of hostilities, he 
never lost sight of a conflict he believed must in- 
evitably come. 

The turn of events had made the Tory-peace 
party at Athens essentially a Macedonian party. 
The policy of its leaders was to maintain an alliance 
with Philip which, while recognising his leadership 
of Greece as against Persia, should respect the 
autonomy of the city. 

It is interesting to note that this question of the 
primacy or hegemony always associates itself with 



144 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C- 

the relations to Persia. It was so with Sparta's 
position in the Persian wars, and with Athens's in 
the Delian confederacy. It was so at the end of the 
Peloponnesian war, during the Corinthian war, and 
in the peace of Antalcidas. On the other hand, the 
subservience of Thebes to Persia prevented the other 
states from conceding to it the hegemony, even 
when from 371 to 362 B.C. its military power was 
predominant. 

Fear of the Persian and antipathy to orientalism 
constituted in the experience of four generations the 
one potent issue upon which the Greek states could 
be brought to united action. The opportunity of 
Philip in antiquity is repeated in the opportunity of 
Russia to-day. Her rapidly developing hegemony 
among the lesser nationalities of Southeastern 
Europe is based upon their feeling that she is the 
natural protector and leader of occidentalism and 
Byzantine Christianity against Mohammedanism 
and the Turk. 

The general outlines of the peace policy of this 
time are well reflected in Isocrates's address to Philip 
(346 B.C.), from the closing paragraph of which the 
following sentences are quoted : 

" So then it remains for me to summarise what I have 
said, so that you [Philip] may have before you in briefest 
possible form the substance of my proposition. I claim 
it is, namely, your mission to be both benefactor of the 
Greeks, and King of the Macedonians, and ruler of the 
barbarians far and wide. For in doing this you will win 
the gratitude of all, — of the Greeks for the benefits re- 
ceived ; of the Macedonians, that you rule them as a king 



338 B.C.] The Old Greek Political System. 145 

and not a tyrant; of other men, that you have freed them 
from barbarian oppression and brought them under 
Grecian watch-care." 

Philip himself was not inclined to war. The ends 
he had in view were best attained through peace. 
The leadership of Greece which he desired was not 
a thing to be extorted by force, but must come to 
him by voluntary concession of the states. That 
was the spirit of the old Greek hegemonies, and it 
was clearly hegemony and not subjugation that 
Philip had in mind. Such a hegemony Philip in 
the year 343 B.C. virtually held already with respect 
to more than half Greece. Thebes, Locris, and the 
lesser Amphictyonic states, Thessaly, a portion of 
the Eubcean towns, ^Etolia, and, in the Pelopon- 
nesus, Argos, Megalopolis, and Messene, all looked 
to him for protection and political guidance. 

It would not have been difficult for him at any 
time by appealing to religious prejudices to have 
united all the powers north of the Isthmus in a war 
against Athens. The part the city had taken in the 
Phocian war in support of what had now come to be 
regarded as temple-robbery could easily have served 
as a pretext. Furthermore, there was nothing now 
to relieve the utter political isolation of Athens ex- 
cept a certain understanding with Sparta, which in 
the present position of that state was practically 
valueless. Philip preferred, however, diplomacy to 
war. His communications with Athens are couched 
in conciliatory terms, every possible concession is 
made to the city's demands, and the nervous activ- 



146 Alexander the Great. [404 B.C.- 

ity of the anti-Macedonian leaders in stirring up 
everywhere oppositions against him, is treated with 
a crafty patience in hope of avoiding conflict until a 
reaction of sentiment in his favour might set in. 

Demosthenes developed during this period a most 
brilliant energy in the role of agitator. Wherever 
Macedonian sentiment seemed to be making pro- 
gress, there he was present with warnings. When- 
ever the public mind seemed to be coming to rest 
and resigning itself to the Macedonian drift of 
things, he was ready with some new device for 
arousing the spirit of local patriotism. He caused 
public suits to be brought against prominent mem- 
bers of the Macedonian party. He made journeys 
into the Peloponnesus, Thessaly, Thrace, and even 
Illyria, addressing the people and conferring with 
political leaders. The cities of Euboea were united 
in an anti-Macedonian league. An alliance was 
reestablished with Byzantium, Rhodes, and Chios. 
Colonists were settled at the mouth of the Darda- 
nelles, and their interference with Philip's rights 
recklessly defended against all his protests (341 B.C.). 
These complications, followed by Philip's movement 
against Byzantium (340 B.C.), finally created a con- 
dition of open war. It is the war that ended two 
years later with the battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.), 
and is Demosthenes's own undisputed handiwork. 

Demosthenes's policy now turned itself toward 
effecting an alliance with Thebes. Thebes had been 
displaced by Philip in the leadership of the central 
states, and herein lay a basis of appeal, but in pur- 
suance of this policy Demosthenes was led into a 




/ESCHINES. 

FROM THE MARBLE STATUE IN THE BOSTON MUSEUM. 



338 B.C.] The Old Greek Political System. 147 

political error of the most far-reaching consequences. 
During the Amphictyonic session at Delphi in the 
spring of 339 B.C., an attempt of the city Amphissa, 
ally and friend of Thebes, to instigate a sacred 
war against Athens had been cleverly foiled by 
^Eschines, one of the Athenian delegates, who, con- 
triving to trump up a countercharge, caused a war 
to be declared against Amphissa itself. The oppor- 
tunity thus offered Athens of assuming a leadership 
among the central states by putting itself at the 
head of this war was, however, disregarded, through 
fear of alienating Thebes. After the war had dragged 
on during the summer without result, Philip was 
called to lead it, and in the fall of 339 B.C. appeared 
in Central Greece at the head of an army. In later 
years Demosthenes sought to interpret the action of 
^Eschines at Delphi as a deliberate and finely calcul- 
ated attempt to open a way for Philip into Greece, 
but such a view of the case finds no warrant either 
in the known facts or the general probabilities. 

The presence of Philip lent such weight at Thebes 
to Demosthenes's earnest appeals for joint action, 
that an alliance was finally effected, and vigorous 
preparations for war immediately commenced. Still 
Philip sought peace, and there were many of the 
wiser sort in both cities who were disposed to listen 
to him. At Athens, Phocion in particular earnestly * 
warned his countrymen against risking the chances 
of war; but the masses were now enthusiastic for 
war, and confidence in the strength of the new 
alliance dispelled all solicitude. The appeal to arms 

* Plutarch, Phocion, chap. xvi. 



148 Alexander the Great. [404-338 B.Co] 

was inevitable, and at Chaeronea, in August, 338 
B.C., the issue of a single day made Philip not only 
leader, as he had sought, but master of Greece. 
With his death two years later (August, 336 B.C.), 
at ^Egae, this leadership, coupled with responsibility 
for all the problems it involved, passed into the 
hands of his son Alexander. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ALEXANDER IN THRACE AND ILLYRIA. 
33^-335 B.C. 

WHEN Philip fell at the theatre gates in JEgaz 
it seemed likely that his empire had fallen 
with him. It had been a creation of his 
personality, and that personality seemed essential to 
its continuance. In the opinion of the best politi- 
cal judges of the time, Macedonia's control south of 
the Cambunian range, the northern limit of Thessaly, 
was at an end. If Alexander had accepted the 
advice of his friends, indeed, he would have re- 
linquished all thought of asserting himself in Greece 
proper, and have restricted his attention entirely to 
maintaining and securing his position at home. 
Here there were difficulties enough for a youth of 
twenty years to face. The Illyrian, Paeonian, and 
Thracian tribes, which bordered on three sides of the 
Macedonian territory, were ready to take quick ad- 
vantage of any weakness, and throw off the yoke, 
or, as the case might be, overleap the restraint of 
Macedonian authority. 

149 



150 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

Even his claim to the succession did not remain 
unchallenged. Only a few days before Philip's 
death a son had been born to the King by Cleopatra. 
The marriage with Cleopatra had been not only a 
vigorous affair of the heart with Philip, but bore a 
decided political significance. Attalus, her uncle, 
was a leading personality in army and nation, and 
embodied in his connections and influence the old- 
fashioned Macedonian ideas and spirit. He was 
now, in conjunction with Parmenion, in command 
of an army in Asia Minor, and was sure, at the first 
news of Philip's death, to use his strength in sup- 
porting the claims of his niece's child. Also, a very 
considerable number of influential Macedonians 
favoured the claims of Amyntas, son of Philip's 
elder brother Perdiccas; while others would have 
preferred the Lyncestian line, which early in the 
century, in the person of ^Eropus, had held the 
throne. The popular prejudice against the foreign 
ideas, the new notions of life, manners, education, 
and, above all, the new ambitions and far-reaching 
imperial schemes which had been identified with the 
reign of Philip could be easily appealed to in the 
interest of preventing Alexander's accession. The 
voice of the chauvinists who demanded a Macedon- 
ian for Macedonians had already been heard, at the 
wedding - feast of Cleopatra, protesting against 
the succession of Alexander, the foreign woman's 
son. 

Alexander gave opposition no time to formulate. 
He acted with decision and rapidity. The two 
Lyncestian princes who were suspected of being 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy via. 151 

accomplices of Pausanias were immediately put to 
death. Their only surviving brother promptly 
recognised Alexander as king, and was spared. 
Hecataeus, one of the young King's most intimate 
and trusted friends, was despatched with a body of 
troops into Asia Minor, with definite orders to seize 
Attalus alive, if he could ; if not, to put him quietly 
out of the way. It was a dubious mission. Attalus 
had made himself singularly popular with the army. 
Parmenion, his associate in command, was his father- 
in-law, and he might naturally count upon him. 
The Athenians, quick to use their opportunity, had 
sent messengers to encourage him rgainst recognis- 
ing Alexander. A letter from Derr jsthenes himself 
gave the plot official status. The conspiracy took 
shape in support of the claims of Amyntas, Perdic- 
cas's son. He .was a likelier pretender than Cleo- 
patra's infant son, and, like a Spanish Don Carlos, 
could raise a faJ,r claim to legitimacy. But when 
Parmenion proved true to Alexander, and the tide 
set strong toward his recognition, Attalus showed 
the faint heart, and hastened to set himself right by 
sending Demosthenes's letter to Alexander, and 
protesting his loyalty. Too late. Hecataeus was 
gone on his mission, and no one moved to recall 
him. Before winter came Attalus had disappeared, 
and no record tells how. Amyntas and all the male 
relatives of Attalus and Cleopatra shared in Mace- 
donia a like fate. 

Antipater, the leading general at home, proved 
loyal to Alexander, and his aid in assuring the loy- 
alty of the army was undoubtedly of importance; 



152 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

and yet it must be remembered that Alexander had 
by his own activity already made himself favourably 
known to the army. There seems, at any rate, to 
have been no evidence of disloyalty among the regu- 
lar troops concentrated about Pella, the capital. 

But Alexander was in pursuit of bigger game than 
mere security at home. It was this, indeed, which 
determined the confidence of his action and assured 
his easy success. The affairs at home were treated 
as petty things, to be settled at a stroke and with- 
out the slightest doubt or hesitation, in order that 
he might be free to move out into the greater world 
where his real work lay. 

Alexander declined to be a creature of small 
things. Within a fortnight after his father's death 
he had made it evident that he was to be either 
"the Great " or nothing. He declined to recognise 
defeat or failure. He took it for granted that he 
was to succeed. What men called failure he named, 
and made to be the prelude to, success. Men came 
to believe in his star. It soon became evident that 
he was either to be a brilliantly successful man, or a 
failure so colossal as to establish a classical standard. 

Without waiting to reorganise his government at 
home or to reassure himself of the allegiance of the 
barbarous tribes that skirted his western and northern 
frontiers, and even before he had heard the result of 
Hecataeus's mission against Attalus, he set forth 
with startling suddenness into Greece itself. Here 
was the field where all was to be won or lost. The 
moment the news of Philip's death had reached the 
cities of Greece they had assumed themselves free 






335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illyria. 153 

from all obligations to Macedonian authority. The 
Ambraciotes had expelled their Macedonian garri- 
son. The yEtolians voted to admit into their land 
the Acharnanian malcontents whom Philip had ban- 
ished. The Argives, the Eleans, the Spartans, made 
official assertion of their independence. Thebes, 
despite its garrison, muttered insurrection, but no- 
where was the news received with more unconcealed 
evidences of joy than at Athens. 

A private messenger sent by Charidemus, who 
was at the time reconnoitring off the coast of 
Macedonia, first brought the tidings to Demos- 
thenes. Though the orator was then in mourning 
for his daughter, who had died a week before, he 
put on a white festal robe and a crown of flowers, 
appeared before the assembled council, and in most 
dramatic fashion made announcement of the news as 
something communicated to him by Athena and 
Hero in a dream. Alexander he ventured in his ill- 
judged speech of congratulation to characterise as a 
cad, a genuine stuffed hero Margites, who for fear 
of his skin was not like to trust himself outside the 
precincts of Pella. The orator carried the council 
and the town-meeting with him, and on his motion 
the murderer Pausanias was proclaimed a public 
benefactor, and offerings of thanksgiving to the gods 
were decreed. 

Demosthenes was certainly a master of sentimental 
politics. But in all this he reckoned without his 
host, as Greeks of this latter day have been known 
to do. The Macedonian army, twenty-five thousand 
strong, was already on the march. Unheralded by 






154 Alexander the Great. [336 b.c- 

bulletin or courier, unannounced and unnoticed, this 
black storm-cloud of war gathered at the north and 
swept down like the whirlwind. It was no locust 
horde of Scyths or Goths ; it was the terrible machine 
of war that Philip had built, a superbly disciplined 
army massed in companies and battalions, moving 
in rank and file. War was no longer free-and-easy 
sport ; Philip had made it a practical thing of 
machinery. There were no baggage-trains, am- 
munition-waggons, sutlers, or commissaries. Each 
man carried in a simple basket haversack his own 
frugal store of provisions — bread, olives, onions, and 
salt fish or meat. The heavy-armed horsemen alone 
were allowed a single attendant or groom. The stout 
yeomen of the phalanx, who made the mass of the 
army, trudged sturdily on, each bearing the small 
round shield and towering eighteen-foot pike, girt 
with the short sword, and wearing cap, cuirass, and 
greaves. And so they moved fast. The first day 
they passed through the plain and on by the shore 
of the sea, by Methone and Pydna. Philip had 
trained them to march thirty and thirty-five miles 
in a day. The second day they passed under the 
shadow of Mount Olympus and came to the mouth 
of the River Peneus, where the road turns west to 
enter Thessaly by the vale of Tempe. But still they 
kept to the seashore to avoid risk of giving the 
alarm, and, fording the river, pushed around the 
foot of Mount Ossa until they could force their way 
by a path of their own making over its southern 
slopes, down into the plain of Thessaly. Scarcely 
had the echoes of the thanksgiving festival died 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy ria. 155 

away at Athens when they stood at the gates of 
Larissa. 

In the face of a fact like this army the Thessalians 
experienced no difficulty in realising themselves 
faithful adherents of Philip's son. All Thessaly, a 
fifth of Greece, was his without a struggle, and with 
it came its famous cavalry, the most important 
contingent Greece ever furnished to his army. 

Then he advanced quickly to Thermopylae, 
seventy miles to the south, and possessed himself 
of this main gateway into central Greece. He 
found, we must suppose, the Amphictyonic Council 
assembled there for its September session. We 
know, in any case, that he received prompt renewal 
of the recognition it had previously given the Mace- 
donian claims to leadership in Greek affairs. The 
council represented merely an association of twelve 
tribes or nations, most of them the lesser peoples of 
northern Hellas, organised in early times to conduct 
and protect the temple service and the temple fairs, 
first at Thermopylae, then at Delphi ; but it had the 
sanctions of long tradition and religion, and was 
almost the only organised form of union among the 
Greek states, and so its indorsement carried weight. 
In northern Greece the game was won. 

Before central Greece was really aware of Alexan- 
der's approach, he had entered Bceotia and was 
encamped before Thebes, on the road joining it to 
Athens, forty miles distant. In the metropolis 
panic took the place of cheap confidence. The 
country population left the fields of Attica and 
swarmed within the walls. Hurried preparations 



156 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C.- 

were made for defence. The town-meeting hastened 
to reverse its attitude, and promptly decreed an em- 
bassy to Alexander to apologise for their former 
action and sue for mercy. 

The King was found in gracious mood. After 
chiding them for their impulsive disloyalty, he gave 
them assurances of peace and of a continuance of 
their local autonomy, and summoned them to meet 
him later in the National Council at Corinth. The 
same spirit characterised his treatment of the other 
cities. The King proved himself great in generosity 
of spirit before ever he showed himself great at arms, 
and on the return of their ambassadors the Athenians 
voted him a benefactor of the city, and awarded him 
two golden crowns of honour. 

All semblance of opposition to the new authority 
had disappeared like dew before the rising sun. At 
Corinth, representatives of all the states speedily as- 
sembled and hastened to renew the league which 
they had made with Philip, and to proclaim Alexan- 
der the military leader of the, Hellenic Empire. 
Sparta alone stood out in sulky stubbornness. To 
the summons for the council she sent the character- 
istic reply: "It is not our usage to follow others, 
but ourselves to lead them. " Sparta was, however, 
now only a provincial village. She no longer 
counted in the affairs of Greece. Alexander could 
afford to smile and leave her in her sulks. 

The right to lead Greece against the Orient, which 
had been to his father, we may surmise, little more 
than a politician's device for consolidating empire, 
had become to him a real and all-absorbing aim. 






335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy ria. 157 

Toward that aim as a goal he proceeded with the 
fervid energy of a half-fanatic. His father had been 
rather a man of practical affairs, but Alexander was 
a man of ideas, and to him ideals assumed the form 
of realities. He was young, and the full flush of 
strength, the consciousness of power, and the love 
of action and creation, urged him nervously and 
relentlessly toward the fulfillment of his dream. 
Prudent men may well have shaken their heads in 
distrust, as they nowadays do in Germany at the 
restless energy and rash idealism of their young 
Kaiser. But it was of no avail. A century of in- 
testine struggles had slackened faith in the old 
doctrines of states' rights and local independence, 
and the power was now hopelessly concentrated in 
the hands of one man, who could do what he willed. 

This visit to Corinth brought the young autocrat, 
if gossip is true, one opportunity of learning a helpful 
lesson. All the men of note, soldiers, politicians, 
and sages, came to pay their respects to the young 
King. Only Diogenes, who dwelt in Craneum, a 
suburb east of Corinth, came not. All the more 
Alexander wished to see him. So he went where he 
was, and found him lying and sunning himself in the 
court of the gymnasium. Standing before him, sur- 
rounded by his suite of officers, the King ventured 
to introduce himself: " lam Alexander the King." 
"lam Diogenes the cynic," was the reply. Then 
Alexander, as the conversation made no headway, 
asked if there were aught that he could do for him. 

If you and your men would stand from between 
me and the sun." And Alexander marvelled, and 



158 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

on reflection was inclined to admire the man, saying, 
as the story has it: "If I were not Alexander, I 
should wish to be Diogenes." 

From Corinth Alexander crossed to Delphi. The 
blessing of the Pythian priestess was all that he 
lacked for the beginning of his great enterprise. It 
was already late in November (336 B.C.). The sun- 
god Apollo had yielded his place in the sanctuary to 
the god of the slumbering vegetation, Dionysus, 
who held it for the winter months. Tlje mouth of 
the oracle was by established tradition closed. But 
tradition was a slight matter to a man who has 
power and must. He caught the Pythia by the 
arm, and essayed to drag her to the tripod seat of 
augury ; and to his compulsion the unwilling priestess 
answered in words he was glad to accept as the voice 
of deity and the sufficient blessing upon his mission : 
" My son, thou art irresistible! " 

In the early winter Alexander returned to Mace- 
donia. Here he found, to his shame and disgust, 
that his mother, Olympias, true to her savage in- 
stincts, had utilised his absence to sate her vengeful 
jealousy upon the helpless Cleopatra. She had 
caused Cleopatra's babe to be killed in the mother's 
arms, and had forced the poor woman herself to end 
her life with the cord. Displeased as the young 
King was at this act of cool savagery, the ethics and 
usages of the Macedonian " change of administra- 
tion " tolerated and encouraged the " clean sweep," 
and, as occasion offered, he proceeded to make it, 
as we have already shown. 

The Macedonian army in Asia, under command of 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy ria. 159 

Parmenion, now occupied the extreme north-western 
corner of Asia Minor, bounded by a line stretching 
in general from Cyzicus to Pergamon. It had no 
mission of aggression for the present, but could serve 
to hold in check any possible movement of the Per- 
sian forces toward the north. Before venturing upon 
a campaign against the East, Alexander was bound 
to secure his northern frontier. 

No single central power existed here, but only a 
mass of more or less warlike tribes with short mem- 
ories and a'consequent need of periodic castigation. 
Even those who had submitted to Philip required 
to taste the quality of the new ruler's power before 
being confidently assured that he was not merely 
" painted to resemble iron." Besides, there were 
the Triballi, snugly ensconced between the Balkans 
and the Danube, in what is now western Bulgaria, 
who had never been any too docile, and against 
whom a family grudge was still standing for the 
mischievous treatment they had once shown Philip, 
on his return in 339 B.C. from raiding the Scythians; 
for they had caught him at a disadvantage on his 
march, robbed him of a good share of the booty he 
had with him, and left him a wound that hurried 
him home. The busy years that followed had 
given Philip no opportunity to take his revenge; so 
Alexander assumed the responsibility as part of his 
inheritance. 

In April (335 B.C.), therefore, Alexander set forth 
from Amphipolis, and moving up the valley of the 
Nestus, a march of 120 miles or so, crossed the pass 
between Rhodope and Dunax, which separate the 



160 Alexander the Great. [336 B.c- 

valleys of the Nestus and the Hebrus. He then 
crossed the valley of the Hebrus in modern eastern 
Roumelia, leaving Philippopolis, a secure Macedon- 
ian stronghold, at his rear; and in ten days from the 
time he had crossed the Nestus was at the foot of 
the Balkans, anciently known as the Hsemus range, 
prepared to force the narrow route between modern 
eastern Roumelia and Bulgaria, now famous since 
the Russo-Turkish war as the Shipka Pass. 

Here he encountered from the Thracian mount- 
aineers his first resistance, and Arrian's * graphic 



* Flavius Arrianus, born in Nicomedia, on the coast of the Sea of 
Marmora, wrote his Anabasis of Alexander in the second century- 
after Christ. If in the following pages his statements are cited more 
frequently and with more assurance than those of any other ancient 
biographer of our hero, it is not because he exhibits a finer sense for 
historical perspective, or displays a more exact appreciation of his 
hero's character, but chiefly because, in addition to furnishing a 
fuller account than any one else of Alexander's campaigns, he affords 
us a definite guaranty that he has carefully and methodically em- 
ployed what he believed to be the most reliable sources of informa- 
tion. He was not a historian in the best sense of the word, but a 
plain soldier and a man of affairs, who undertook to rescue the story 
of Alexander's career from the haze in which rhetoric and marvel 
had enshrouded it by returning to the prosaic basis of fact contained 
in the records of Alexander's associates, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. 
These records are now lost to us, except as they are cited and used 
by others. "When he uses materials from other writers he can, as a 
rule, be relied upon to indicate it by an "it is said." His rather 
cut-and-dried rule of critical procedure, coupled with his lack of 
dramatic power and of sense for historical horizon, leaves to his 
narrative only the charm which inheres in its own simplicity and 
truth. The soldier's interest in battle, manoeuvre, and topography 
is apparent in every chapter. 

Our other chief sources include Plutarch, Arrian's senior by some 
fifty years, who, with finer sense for the framework of personality 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy ria. 161 

story of the way in which he overcame it offers a 
striking testimonial to that practical military gump- 
tion which characterised all his career as a general : 

" Crossing the river Nestus, they say he reached 
Mount Haemus on the tenth day. And there met him 
there, along the defiles as he ascended the mountain, 
masses of well-armed traders, as well as bands of free 
Thracians, who had made preparations to check the 
further advance of the army by occupying the summit of 
the Hasmus, where the troops had to pass. They had 
collected together their waggons and placed them in 
their front, not only using them as a rampart from which 
they might defend themselves, if hard pressed, but also 
intending to let them loose, where the mountain was pre- 
cipitous, upon the phalanx of the Macedonians in its 
ascent. . . . But Alexander conceived a plan for 
crossing the mountain with the minimum of danger, and 
being resolved to take all risks, knowing there was no 
other possible route, he commanded the heavy-armed 
soldiers, whenever the waggons came rolling down the 
slopes, to open ranks so far as the width of the road per- 
mitted, and let the waggons run by; but if they were 
hemmed on either side, to huddle down in a mass and 

and for dramatic interest of anecdote and the human element, and 
with larger confidence in his ability to sift the truth from many vari- 
ous accounts, composed the famous Life of Alexander ; furthermore, 
Diodorus Siculus, Justinus, Trogus Pompeius, and Curtius Rufus, 
who represent, in general, a preference for the more romantic and 
rhetorically embellished accounts which had their chief source in the 
story of Clitarchus, dating from the early years of the third century 
B.C. They all contained undoubtedly much sound material of fact 
under the romantic guise ; and especially Curtius Rufus, since it has 
been demonstrated how faithfully he used in the main his sources, is 
worthy of a larger credence than has often been accorded him. 



1 62 Alexander the Great. [336B.C- 

lock their shields compactly together, so that the wag- 
gons by their very impetus should leap over them and 
pass on without doing hurt. And it turned out just as 
Alexander had conjectured and commanded. . . . 
The waggons rolled on over the shields without doing 
much injury. Indeed, not a single man was killed under 
them. Then the Macedonians, regaining their courage, 
inasmuch as the waggons, which they had greatly dreaded, 
inflicted no damage upon them, charged with a shout 
against the enemy." 

The rest of the battle developed nothing more re- 
markable than the fleetness of foot of the Thracians, 
fifteen hundred of whom, however, fell in spite of it. 
Sending his booty off south to the seashore, where 
it would find a market, Alexander pushed on toward 
the Danube through the country of the Triballi. 
Not far from the river he met them in a formal 
battle, which proved how ill adapted were the loose, 
irregular methods of even these hearty fighters to 
cope with the order and discipline of a war-machine 
like the Macedonian phalanx, supported by cavalry. 

Coming in sight of the Danube, Alexander con- 
ceived the desire of at least crossing it in order to 
convey if no more than the fame of his arms to the 
powerful tribes that dwelt to the north. On the 
north shore, in the territory known to the Romans 
as Dacia, and now occupied by the kingdom of 
Roumania, dwelt the Getae, a powerful folk of 
Thraco-Phrygian connection, known to the Greeks 
chiefly through their famous Zamolxis cult, in 
which the belief in immortality received a peculiar 
emphasis. Arrian refers to them as " the Getae, 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and Illy ria. 163 

who hold the doctrine of immortality." A small 
fleet of ships, cooperating with the Macedonians, 
had come around by the Black Sea and were now 
in readiness. With the help of these, and of rafts 
constructed of hides stuffed with hay, as well as of 
a lot of dugouts collected from the fishermen and 
river-pirates, he succeeded, under cover of the night, 
in landing a force of fifteen hundred cavalry and four 
thousand infantry on the other shore, thus surprising 
the enemy, who were collected in force to prevent a 
landing, and who had relied upon the mighty stream 
as a sufficient protection against the passage of any 
considerable number of Alexander's forces at one 
time. 

The Macedonians had landed at a point where the 
bank was covered by grain-fields, and they were 
concealed for a while, as Arrian tells us, by the high- 
standing grain. This marks the time as the end of 
May. The Getae, panic-stricken at the apparition 
of the wonder-working Southmen, as they emerged 
from the grain, made little resistance, and fled with 
all expedition to their fortified town three miles back 
from the river, only to abandon it shortly after, 
transporting upon the backs of their horses all that 
the animals would carry of women and children and 
goods, and making off for the steppes beyond. 

Before night Alexander had recrossed the Danube. 
Embassies of the nations dwelling about came shortly 
to pay him homage and claim his friendship. There 
were first in line the well-humbled Triballi, who 
thenceforth became his vassals and furnished a con- 
tingent for his army. Some even came from the 



164 Alexander the Great. [336 B.C.- 

Celts, who lived in the present Hungary and the 
lands to the west, and who in the next century (284- 
278 B.C.) were to make themselves known for a brief 
period, in the terror of Galatian desolation, to the 
whole Balkan peninsula, parts of Greece and of cent- 
ral Asia Minor. They were the same people, too, 
whom later history finds in occupation of France 
and the British Isles, and whose language still per- 
sists in the Irish of Ireland, the Gaelic of Scotland, 
the Welsh of Wales, the Manx of the Isle of Man, 
and the Bretonic of the French Basse-Bretagne. 
Arrian says that they were " a people of great stature 
and haughty disposition." 

The young autocrat, in essaying for the gratifica- 
tion of his curiosity and his personal pride to cate- 
chise them a bit, met with a classic disappointment, 
which has given joy to the souls of free men ever 
since. He asked them, to quote Arrian's words, 

" what thing in the world caused them special apprehen- 
sion, expecting that his own great fame had reached the 
Celts and had penetrated still farther, and that they 
would say they feared him most of all things. But the 
answer of the Celts turned out quite contrary to his ex- 
pectations; for, as they dwelt so far away from Alexan- 
der, inhabiting districts difficult of access, and as they 
saw he was about to set out in another direction, they 
said they were afraid that the sky would some time or 
other fall upon them." 

Alexander dismissed them kindly, dignifying them 
with the title of friends and allies, but he retained 
his own private opinion of them, for he always 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Thrace and I llyria. 165 

claimed to know that " the Celts are great brag- 
garts." 

Returning toward home, he passed by another 
route farther to the west, leading up the valley of 
the Isker by the site of Sofia, the present capital 
of Bulgaria, and coming into the territory of the 
friendly Agrianians and Pseonians, neighbours of 
Macedonia on the north, learned that the Illyrian 
chieftain Clitus, whose father, Bardylis, of bellicose 
memory, Philip had defeated and slain twenty-four 
years before, and who had himself, fourteen years 
before, required to receive severe chastising at the 
hands of the same King, had now again revolted, 
and had been joined by Glaucias, chief of the Taul- 
antians, a people dwelling farther to the west, in the 
neighbourhood of the modern Durazzo in Albania. 
To reach Pelion, the chief city of Clitus, required 
a march of some two hundred miles, but Alexander 
did not hesitate. Accompanied by a considerable 
auxiliary force of Agrianians, he marched directly 
thither and laid siege to Pelion. Though almost 
caught here in a trap by the approach of Glaucias's 
army in the rear, he succeeded by a series of brilliant 
manoeuvres in extricating himself, and then, three 
days later, in surprising and soundly defeating the 
joint forces of his opponents. The city was later 
evacuated and burned, and the enemy dispersed and 
driven back into the mountains of the west. 



CHAPTER X. 

ALEXANDER IN CENTRAL GREECE. 
335 B.C. 

FOR five months Alexander had been absent 
from the seat of government. He was now 
(summer of 335 B.C.) about 150 miles from 
home, and 300 miles from the centres of political 
activity in Greece, buried in the mountains, where 
communication was difficult and movement slow. 
It was a great risk to take in the first year of a reign. 
Already sinister rumours concerning the fortunes 
and fate of the young daredevil were coursing about 
in the cities of Greece. The report that he had 
been killed in battle obtained the more easily cred- 
ence because for a long time no news had been re- 
ceived from him. The anti-Macedonian politicians 
certainly took no pains to check the circulation of 
these stories, and a considerable burden of responsi- 
bility for them is laid by concurrent testimony upon 
the good Demosthenes. Demades says he " all but 
showed the corpse of Alexander there on the bema 
before our eyes." This probably refers to an incid- 

166 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 167 

ent related by both Justinus and the Pseudo-Callis- 
thenes, to the effect that the orator brought into the 
Athenian town-meeting as witness a wounded man 
who testified that Alexander was killed in the battle 
with the Triballi, and that he himself, according to 
the Pseudo-Callisthenes, actually had seen the dead 
body of the King. 

The popular belief in these stories afforded to the 
malcontents of the opposition a most appropriate 
occasion for raising the flag of revolt. Already for 
several months the movement had been in prepara- 
tion. After Alexander's successful descent into 
Greece, and the renewal at Corinth of the Hellenic 
league, Persia, reawakening to the danger, had im- 
mediately begun operations to check the ambitious 
schemes of the young aggressor. An army sent 
into northern Asia Minor had forced the Macedonian 
troops back into the Troad, and compelled a portion 
of them to recross into Europe. The chief reliance 
was not, however, placed in force of arms, but rather 
in the old approved method of manipulating the 
internal politics of Greece. The strife of internal 
politics in democracies always offers easy prey to 
autocrats when international policies are involved, 
and Persia had now come to learn by the experience 
of a century just how to proceed. During the sum- 
mer of this year Darius had made proposals to differ- 
ent states looking to defections from Alexander, and 
had offered to supply money for the support of the 
revolt. The Peloponnesian war (431-404 B.C.) had 
been kept alive in part by means of Persian money 
supplied at the fitting time to what appeared the 



1 68 Alexander the Great. [335 B.C. 

weaker party, and since then Persia had often inter- 
vened to preserve a balance of power between the 
Greek states and to insure inaction. 

None of the states, except Sparta, are known 
publicly to have accepted money, but the leaders of 
the anti-Macedonian parties in different cities were 
undoubtedly well supplied with it, and more was 
effected through them than by Sparta. Two years 
later, after the battle of Issus, Alexander, in his 
letter to Darius, rehearsing the offences which the 
Persian king had committed against him, and which 
had given open occasion to war, refers to this matter : 

" You have also sent money to the Lacedaemonians 
and certain other Greeks, though none of the states ac- 
cepted it except the Lacedaemonians. As your agents 
corrupted my friends, and were striving to dissolve the 
league which I had formed among the Greeks, I took the 
field against you, because you were the party commencing 
the hostility." 

It was a well-known fact never denied even by his 
own partisans, that Demosthenes accepted from the 
Shah three hundred and fifty thousand dollars (three 
hundred talents) to be used as a corruption fund or 
as he might see fit. Eighty thousand dollars of 
this, according to yEschines's accusation, passed into 
the private purse of the great patriot, while the rest 
was set at its work in the Greek cities. The accusa- 
tion cannot be proved or disproved. In the nature 
of the case, no account was rendered, and it would 
have been difficult in any case to determine where 
the line was drawn between the private and the 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 169 

public use of such a corruption fund. Eleven years 
later we know by Demosthenes's own admission that 
he accepted twenty-three thousand dollars from the 
Harpalus fund, that he was unable to show that he 
had made any other than private use of it, and that 
he was condemned by the court, imprisoned, and 
fined fifty talents. 

The Persian funds were variously used : part was 
sent to different cities, notably Thebes, to influence, 
through paid leaders, political action ; part was 
doubtless used in procuring equipment and hiring 
mercenaries ; part stayed at home to aid the party 
machinery ; part, in the nature of things, stayed in 
the purses of the agents. 

Demosthenes was a politician with a consistent 
programme, but a thoroughly practical politician, to 
whom it seemed well to do evil that good might 
come. His patriotism respected religiously the 
limits of his own platform, and he saw no treachery 
in entering into correspondence with the Persian 
satrap of Sardes, and planning with him the details 
of the plot. Plutarch tells us that Alexander later 
discovered at Sardes some of these letters of Demos- 
thenes, which contained also evidence of the amount 
of money received. In doing as he did, Demos- 
thenes merely adopted the orthodox methods of his 
day. His enthusiasm was doubtless genuine and 
grounded in public spirit. Our protest is directed 
therefore, not so much against him as against those 
versions of Greek political history which blacken the 
political motives of his opponents by assigning to 
them a monopoly of blackened methods. Demos- 



170 Alexander the Great. [335 B.C. 

thenes had now become more than an Athenian 
statesman ; he was a politician at large. All Greece 
recognised him as the champion, almost the personal 
embodiment, of a political policy which defended 
the regime of old Greece, with its independent cities 
and its balance of weakness, against the policy of 
union in a military leadership. 

As the summer proceeded, his plans, aided by the 
absence of Alexander, and later by the stories of his 
death, made brilliant progress. In Elis the Mace- 
donian sympathisers were banished from the city. 
Various Arcadian towns were in ferment. The 
^Etolians were moving to revolt. Athens was arm- 
ing. The open breach came, however, at Thebes. 
Here a large Macedonian garrison occupied the 
citadel. Any step that was taken was, in conse- 
quence, bound to involve open war. One night 
after the story of Alexander's death had assumed 
credible form, a body of Theban citizens who had 
been living in banishment at Athens quietly entered 
the town, proclaimed the supposed news as certain 
fact, and called upon the people to revolt. Amyntas 
and Timolaus, the one a Macedonian officer, the 
other a prominent Theban leader of the Macedonian 
party, were caught by the mob in the lower city and 
slain. A mass-meeting of citizens, hurriedly called, 
proclaimed the freedom of the city by unseating the 
officials appointed by the Macedonians and naming 
a board of boiotarchoi to assume the supreme con- 
trol, as under the old constitution. The Cadmea 
was thereupon blockaded by a double rampart drawn 
about it to prevent the garrison from sallying out or 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 171 

receiving reinforcements and supplies. Arms were 
supplied from Athens with the fund in Demos- 
thenes's hands. The insurrection was an accom- 
plished fact. Athens sent messengers far and wide 
to arouse the people to arms. An armed force was 
moving forward from the Peloponnesus. Athens 
stood ready to aid. The Hellenic Empire of Alex- 
ander seemed utterly undermined and tottering to 
the fall, and he was three hundred miles away, in 
the mountain wilderness of Illyria. 

When the news of the insurrection reached him, 
he turned immediately from the pursuit of the 
Illyrians, and leading his army by forced marches 
through the rough lands of Eordaea and Elimiotis, 
through wildernesses, across rivers, and over the 
slopes of the great mountain ranges which separate 
Illyria from Thessaly, on the seventh day was at 
Pelinna, in the Peneus valley, not far from the 
modern Trikkala in northern Thessaly. Pushing on 
from there across the great Thessalian plain, over 
the pass by the modern Domoko, to Lamia and 
Thermopylae, and then across the Locrian hills, he 
entered Boeotia on the sixth day from Pelinna, with 
130 miles behind him. His approach had been en- 
tirely unheralded and unexpected. When the report 
reached Thebes that Alexander, at the head of a 
Macedonian army, was already within the district, 
the leaders of the revolt insisted that it must be 
Antipater, for Alexander was surely dead ; or, if it 
was Alexander, it must be the other Alexander, the 
son of vEropus — a mere confusion of names. 

Thebes was a city of some forty thousand inhabit- 



\*]2 Alexander the Great. [335 B.C. 

ants. It stood on the lower northern slopes of a 
chain of flat hills, just where three brooks, two of 
them known to fame as Dirce and Ismenus, issue 
forth into the plain. Its walls inclosed a circuit of 
four miles. In the south-eastern part of the city a 
long, low hill, called the Cadmea, carried the citadel, 
and at its southern post was the Electra gate, where 
the road from Athens came in. It was a solid, 
rather staid old town, wealthy, and much given to 
ease and good living. We hear that the public 
square was surrounded by colonnades, and that 
there were various temples located throughout the 
city ; but there were no wonders of architecture or 
art such as Athens had to boast. Theban interest 
did not run that way. We know of no single artist 
who came from Thebes. Pindar is the one great 
writer. Athens and Thebes, near neighbours, gave 
an easy opportunity of contrast, and no doubt the 
latter has suffered unduly for it in history. The 
Boeotians have come down to us labelled " Pigs," 
and everyone has heard of Boeotian stupidity ; they 
are often called, too, " the Dutchmen of Greece," 
having been wronged in the comparison with the 
sprightly and quick-witted Athenians, much as the 
good people of Holland have been by the comparison 
with the French. 

The next day Alexander advanced toward the 
city, but finally halted and made his camp at some 
distance from it, with the purpose of giving the 
Thebans opportunity to repent their rashness, and 
in the hope that the last moment might still effect a 
compromise and reconciliation. In this he was dis- 






335 B.C.] Alexander in Central' Greece. 173 

appointed, for the Theban forces showed themselves 
disposed to take the aggressive, and instead of 
ambassadors seeking peace, a body of cavalry and 
light-armed infantry shortly appeared before his 
camp and engaged his outposts. Even yet the King 
refrained from beginning hostilities. His desire was 
to have the Greek cities his allies and friends. He 
had better use for his arms than in destroying those 
who might be his co-workers. In perfect conscious- 
ness of power, he waited still. The next day, as the 
warlike attitude of the Thebans showed no relenting, 
he marched round to the south gate of the city, 
whence issued the main road joining the city to 
Athens, and took his position directly under the 
walls of the Cadmea, where he might easily come 
into communication with its beleaguered garrison. 
Still he hesitated to order an attack, and finally, as 
it would appear, only by half-accident and through 
the restlessness of one of his generals, Perdiccas, did 
the battle begin. Perdiccas, who was in the com- 
mand of the advanced guard, becoming involved in 
a skirmish with the Theban outposts, was reinforced 
by other troops, and so a general attack was begun. 
After the advance forces of the Macedonians had 
been repulsed by the Theban forces defending the 
gate outside the walls, Alexander advanced with 
the solid phalanx, driving the Thebans in a con- 
fused rout back through the gates, and before they 
had time to close the gates, pressed in behind 
them. The garrison of the citadel now sallied 
forth to join the invaders. The defenders retired 
to the public square just north of the citadel, and 



174 Alexander the Great. [335 B.C. 

made a brief stand near the temple of Amphis; but 
the fight was hopeless. From this time on the battle 
became little better than a massacre. 

Six thousand Thebans were killed, and the city 
and its wealth became the prey of the victor. To 
give it in Arrian's own words: 

" Then indeed the Thebans, no longer defending 
themselves, were slain not so much by the Macedonians 
as by the Phocians, Platseans, and other Boeotians, who 
by indiscriminate slaughter vented their rage against 
them. Some were even attacked in the houses, and 
others as they were supplicating the protection of the 
gods in the temples, not even the women and children 
being spared." 

At last, after much long-suffering, the strong hand 
of the Macedonian power, contrary to all its pur- 
poses and policy, had laid itself with violence upon 
one of the great Greek cities. Once and again it 
had forgiven, but Thebes had transgressed the 
bounds of endurance and could expect no mercy. 
She obtained none. The city was razed to the 
ground, only the house of Pindar being spared; 
the territory was distributed among the allies, and 
the inhabitants who survived, some thirty thousand 
in number, excepting only the priests and priestesses, 
the descendants of Pindar, and the guests, friends of 
Philip and Alexander, were sold into slavery, making 
a slave-market so vast that, as we hear, the standard 
price of slaves in the markets of the -^Egean was 
seriously depressed in consequence. 

The ordinary price for a slave was from twenty to 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 175 

thirty-five dollars. Abundant supply kept the price 
low. Society was built on slavery. Slaves, or, as 
in Sparta and Crete, serfs attached to the soil, were 
the farm-labourers; in manufactories they took the 
place of modern machinery; they were a form of in- 
vestment, being often rented out in gangs, as for 
work in the mines; large numbers were used, too, 
for domestic service, seven being an average number 
for an ordinary house. Corinth is said to have had 
460,000 slaves, JEg'ms. 470,000, and a census of the 
year 309 B.C. showed 400,000 in Attica. These 
figures have sometimes been doubted, but other 
known facts go to confirm them. Most of the slaves 
apparently came from outside Greece, as from Lydia, 
Syria, Bithynia, Thrace, and Illyria, but there were 
also among them Italians, Egyptians, and Jews. 
The supply from outside was maintained by the 
slave-traders, who obtained them either in barter 
or by robbery along the coasts of the yEgean and 
the Euxine. The slave-market was a feature of 
every city agora, and especially of the temple fairs. 
Captives in war were, like the rest of the booty, 
treated as merchandise. They were disposed of 
chiefly to the professional traders and sold mostly 
abroad. Thus men of culture and education often 
appeared in the condition of slaves. Employed as 
teachers, readers, secretaries, musicians, they often 
served the purpose of spreading the knowledge of 
art, manners, and life among other peoples, and 
aided in mixing the soils and forwarding the in- 
terests of cosmopolitanism. 

It was a form of poetic justice that the conqueror 



176 Alexander the Great. L335B.C. 

allowed the fate of Thebes to be spoken by the 
mouth of a tribunal composed of its neighbours, the 
Phocians, the Plataeans, the Thespians, and the Or- 
chomenians. The hatred engendered out of gen- 
erations of oppression revelled in its opportunity for 
revenge. All Greece shuddered to hear the fate of 
this famous city, but it could not be forgotten that, 
in the day of the great distress when Persian hordes 
threatened utterly to submerge Hellenism, Thebes 
played the part of traitor and stood with the invader. 

As prelude to the war of revenge against the Per- 
sians, it could not be without the sanction of the 
gods that the chosen leader had laid his hand upon 
the historic accomplice. So, at any rate, many 
chose to regard the matter. Alexander, later in 
life, seems to have regretted his summary treatment 
of the city ; at least, his natural tenderness of heart 
asserted itself in a feeling of compassion toward the 
unfortunate inhabitants, who had been made home- 
less wanderers or slaves, and wherever he afterward 
met them he seemed inclined to show them consider- 
ation and do them kindness. 

In 316 B.C. the city was refounded by Cassander, 
and a small population assembled in it, probably 
not over ten thousand. It never regained anything 
of its old importance, though it was for a time in 
the Middle Ages, a prosperous seat of silk manu- 
facture. To-day it is a town of from thirty to 
thirty-five hundred inhabitants, occupying the old 
Cadmea. 

How rapidly the scene had shifted ! Only fifteen 
days had elapsed since Alexander heard the tidings 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 177 

of revolt in the mountains of the north, and now 
Thebes lay in ashes. One terrible thunderbolt 
stroke, and the insurrection that seethed over all 
Greece was at an end. The Arcadian troops who 
were coming to the support of Thebes had halted at 
the Isthmus on hearing of the Macedonian approach. 
Now they hastened to pass sentence of death upon 
those who had instigated their movement. The 
Eleans recalled the Macedonian sympathisers they 
had banished. The ^Etolians sent embassies to 
offer abject apologies. 

The Athenians, when the news came of the fall of 
Thebes, were just on the point of celebrating the 
Greek mysteries (at the end of September). Panic 
seized upon the populace. The sacred rites were 
interrupted and forgotten. The country population, 
with herds and chattels, came swarming in to seek 
the protection of the walls. Preparations for defence 
were begun, and the collection of a special fund for 
war. But suddenly the whirligig of politics went 
round ; the control of the town-meeting passed from 
the hands of Demosthenes and his anti-Macedonian 
partisans to those of the opposition. On motion of 
Demades, a commission of ten was appointed, com- 
posed of those friendly to Alexander, with instruc- 
tions to congratulate the King upon his return in 
safety from the land of the Triballi and of the 
Illyrians, and upon his righteous punishment of the 
Thebans. No wonder Alexander's sense for nobil- 
ity and straightforwardness shrank in disgust from 
such flunkyism. He is said, when the ambassadors 
first appeared before him, to have torn in pieces the 



i yS Alexander the Great. [335 B.C. 

address they delivered to him, and to have turned 
his back and left them to their shame. 

The embassy finally returned with the King's 
answer. He was willing to forgive the Athenians 
on condition of their expelling the Theban fugitives, 
and delivering to him the politicians and generals 
whom he regarded as responsible for the opposition 
which had culminated three years before at Chaer- 
onea, as well as for the more recent demonstrations 
against the Macedonian power. He especially 
named Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Polyeuctus, Eph- 
ialtes, Mcerocles, Demon, Callisthenes, and Chari- 
demus, and, according to other good authority, 
Hypereides and Diotimus as well. 

The communication of the King's commands pro- 
duced the intensest excitement at Athens. In the 
town-meeting, opinion was raised against opinion. 
To surrender its own citizens at the mandate of an 
autocrat involved self-humiliation and dishonour. 
And'yet the fate of the city was at stake. In trying 
times no one was listened to with more respect than 
the old general Phocion, her" first citizen." Good, 
old-fashioned citizen and statesman that he was, he 
took the high, old-fashioned ground that the few 
ought to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the 
good of the many. Hypereides and Demosthenes 
pleaded for the assertion of national dignity and the 
recognition of the obligations which the state owed 
to those who had watched over its interests. De- 
mosthenes recounted the fable of the sheep who 
made a treaty with the wolves, agreeing to deliver 
over to them the watch-dogs. He likened the case, 



335 B.C.] Alexander in Central Greece. 179 

further, to that of " grain-dealers who carry about 
a sample in a bowl, by means of a few grains of 
wheat selling the whole mass; so in us you give 
yourselves all captive, but you see it not." * 

When it appeared, after ample discussion, that 
the citizens were in no mood to assent to Alexan- 
der's humiliating proposition, a compromise offered 
by Demades was finally adopted. It provided that 
another embassy should be sent, asking Alexander's 
mercy in the matter of the men whose surrender had 
been demanded, and promising, should they be 
found guilty, to deal with them under Athenian 
law ; and asking, furthermore, that they be permitted 
to retain the Theban refugees within their walls. 
In obtaining the King's assent to this compromise, 
the personality of Phocion, the chairman of the em- 
bassy, was an important factor. His advice that the 
King should now prefer to turn his arms against the 
barbarians was a view of the matter that Alexander 
was only too glad to accept, and making an excep- 
tion only of the able and unscrupulous Charidemus, 
he wisely sealed the compact. Greece was at peace. 
The efforts of Persia to stir internal discord had met 
with signal failure. Within the entire extent of the 
Balkan peninsula no hand or voice raised itself 
against the leadership of the King of Macedon. 
There remained nothing now to do but to carry the 
war into Asia. 



Plutarch, Demosthenes, chap, xxiii. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ORIENT VS. OCCIDENT. 

THE world toward which Alexander had set his 
face, and into which he was now preparing to 
enter, was the great, the old world of the 
Orient. From within that world people looked out 
upon young Greece with much the same vague 
understanding and disparaging, sense of superiority 
as the Austrian nobleman or English country squire 
brings to his estimate of the American States to-day. 
The boundary line between the two worlds has 
maintained itself with marvellous persistency 
throughout the entire course of human history. 
One who crosses the yEgean to-day and enters the 
confines of Asia is aware that he has passed from 
one world into another. What constitutes the dif- 
ference may not always be easy to define, but it is 
there. Customs, dress, crafts, homes, and faith 
mark the difference, but these are only on the 
surface. The real difference is something so all- 
pervasive, so profound, that no casual mint-marks 
serve to identify it. It inheres in the moods of 
men, and in their attitude to the world about them, 
It abides at the heart of things, 

180 







2 5 



o y 



Orient vs. Occident. 1 8 1 

Where the boundary runs to-day, it ran in Alex- 
ander's time. Only a bare selvage of Hellenism 
formed by the Greek colonies skirting the western 
coast of Asia Minor interposed itself to push back 
the frontiers of the Orient. The Greek cities of the 
Asiatic coast retained in a measure their Hellenic 
character and kept alive the sense of union with 
Greece which a common language and common in- 
stitutions were like to enforce. But, as a rule, 
whatever had come within the mystic bounds of 
orientalism had yielded to assimilation, and become 
absorbed in the great mass, no matter what the race 
or tongue. 

The potency of superior culture, manifesting itself 
in permanency of life-conditions and of the social 
order, in fixed and well-determined moulds of 
thought, and entrenched in its ancient fortresses by 
the Euphrates, was too great for Phrygian, Cappa- 
docian, Lycian, or Syrian to resist, and the mass 
became leavened with one spirit. The fixity of the 
old frontier is due, so far as history can determine, 
to the unique personality of the Greek and to the 
existence of a geographic furrow at the Bosporus 
and the yEgean. 

The antagonisms which showed themselves at this 
frontier made the beginnings of European history, 
even where it first emerges in the form of myth. 
Such were the stories of the search for the Golden 
Fleece, and such were the songs about Troy and the 
war at its gates. The idealised valour of her heroes 
who first set her in antagonism to the great Eastern 
world outside and beyond gave Greece in her later 



1 82 Alexander the Great. 

days the inspiration to a national consciousness and 
assured her of her mission as the champion of West- 
ern energy and personal freedom. 

The Persian wars under Darius and Xerxes repre- 
sented the natural reaction against the aggressions 
of occidentalism. The tide of orientalism swept out 
over its sea-wall till met by the solid dykes of Mara- 
thon, and Salamis, and Plataea. The story of these 
wars becomes the material for the first manual of 
history. Herodotus rejoiced, child of Homer as he 
was, to deal with the same old theme of which 
Homer had sung. He shaped his material in the 
form of a plot. The rebuke of overweening pride, 
the thing the Greeks called hybris, is the motif. 
The tale begins with the rise of the Persian power, 
gathering unto itself the strength of the barbarian 
world. It ends with Persia's failure and discomfiture 
at Salamis and Plataea. Hybris meets its Nemesis. 

The presumption of Croesus receives in the first 
book its rebuke from the Athenian Solon. The 
Persian power which rose to greatness on the ruins 
of Croesus's power vaunted its pride in Xerxes's host 
and received, in the final book, its rebuke from the 
Athenian state. The story closes with an account 
of the expedition to Sestos, which determined the 
fact that Xerxes's bridge over the Hellespont had 
been destroyed and that Europe was rid of the in- 
truder; the old frontier had reasserted itself. The 
closing words of the last book form an ideal con- 
clusion to the whole work. They represent the 
older policy of the Persian in the good old days 
under Cyrus's leadership: " So the Persians, seeing 



Orient vs. Occident. 183 

their error, yielded to the opinion of Cyrus, for they 
chose rather to live in a barren land than to sow 
the plain and be the slaves of others." 

Thus Solon's rebuke of hybris at the beginning of 
the work is echoed from the lips of the great Persian 
at the end. The whole plan and conception of 
Herodotus's history is based on a recognition of the 
vivid antithesis between occidentalism and oriental- 
ism, and of the geographical frontier which marks 
their separation. 

The invasion which Alexander planned was to be 
the retort and the revenge. He was himself to pose 
as a second Achilles. The epic must have a plot. 
History was still a drama, and, like the Attic tragedy, 
it clung fast to the old motives. The very national 
life of Greece took to itself form in the spirit of this 
unrelenting antagonism between occidentalism and 
orientalism. 

The long-delayed retort to Alexander's onset came 
centuries later in the form of Islam. Turkey, as a 
hopelessly foreign body on European soil, is a stand- 
ing witness to the reality of the antagonism, and the 
Eastern Question of to-day abides as a monument 
to the impulses which carried the young Alexander 
across the Hellespont. 

The Hellenic spirit was characterised above all 
else by a, consciousness of the individual right of 
initiative. The Greek's jealousy of every institution 
and of every man that assumed to interfere with the 
free exercise of that right is responsible for his lean- 
ing toward democracy, his envy of greatness, his 
frequent change of political position, and his failure 



184 Alexander the Great. 

to create and operate elaborate and effective political 
machinery for any other than local government. 

Whatever his view concerning the domain of the 
gods and their right to rule his world, he was in his 
practical philosophy a pluralist, not a monist, and 
the world of life was constituted out of free-moving, 
self-determining personalities. Only when they 
rose above the proper estate of men and intruded 
themselves within the province of the gods did the 
free exercise of personality amount to the hybris 
which merits and meets rebuke. Within the bounds 
of human estate the law of action is determined by 
the purposes and interests of the free personality and 
not from without or from above. The state is that 
within and through which alone the person exists 
and possesses its freedom. It is the very condition 
of existence. But it is not that which originates for 
the person the law of action. 

To the Oriental, on the other hand, the universe 
as well as the state is conceived of as a vast despot- 
ism, which holds in its keeping the source and the 
law of action for all. Its mysterious law, held be- 
yond the reach of human vision, like the inscrutable 
will of the autocrat, is the law of fate. Personality 
knew no right of origination or of self-determination ; 
it was swept like a chip on the current. It knew no 
privilege except to bow in resignation before the un- 
explained, unmotived mandate of fate. The Oriental 
government of the universe was transcendental, the 
Hellenic, social. 

The Hellenic gods were the chief citizens of the 
state, partakers with men in a bond which was made 



Orient vs. Occident. 185 

sacred by their presence. To be associated with 
them was a privilege. They gave dignity and solid- 
ity to the society. To show them respect, to enter- 
tain them with feasts and shows and games was 
seemly and decorous. To show them disrespect was 
treason, and treason was essentially a discourtesy 
and insult to the gods. 

The Greek was always human — very human. His 
humanity was never apologised for. It was the 
best thing he knew of. This sunlit life on earth 
was worth living for — indeed the only thing he 
knew of worth living for. Whatever was human, 
the body and the joys of the flesh, the delights of 
beauty, the triumphs of wit or of strength or of 
craft, all were good except in excess. Virtue lay 
not in abstinence but in self-control. As in the re- 
lations to the divine, all depended here, too, upon 
not crossing the danger-line. 

All mutilation of the body the Greek regarded 
with horror, and in this regard felt himself estranged 
from the Oriental. The Oriental looked with a 
species of disdain upon all that belonged to the 
physical universe, even including the body. He 
was its lord. The Greek lived in the world of 
nature as part of it and good friends with it. In it 
lived his gods, and through its activity his gods 
revealed themselves. The Greek dwelt more with 
the world that was without him, the Oriental more 
with the world that was within him. With the 
former, thought and fancy tended to assume the 
objective cast, with the latter the subjective. 

The Greek brought with him to every work the 



1 86 Alexander the Great. 

freshness and naturalness of the child of nature. 
He lived face to face with nature, and allowed no 
barriers to be interposed, allowed himself not to be 
artificially withdrawn from the world of which he 
was a part. Asceticism, abstinence, and holiness 
by separation he knew nothing of. He was in the 
world, wholly and thoroughly ; of the world, 
worldly, of the earth, earthly, of humanity, human. 

His enthusiasms were those of an untrammelled 
child of nature rejoicing in life and beauty and light. 
The sedate Oriental seemed the offspring of an old 
and ripened civilisation, which had, in the generations 
through which it passed, seen and experienced all the 
great things, and so lost the effervescent freshness 
of youth. The Orient was really the old world. 
Hope was not so high. Effort was not as well worth 
while. 

The Greek seemed to have the world before him. 
He could do what he would. Conditions could be 
changed. The right of initiative gave the right to 
change. The power of initiative imposed the duty 
to create. Life was composed of time, and time 
was measured by action. Action creates, and crea- 
tion is progress. Action, aggression, achievement, 
progress, became, therefore, the spirit of the Greek ; 
endurance, submission, quietism, stagnation, that 
of the man of the East. In all this the Greek was 
merely the full-developed type of the European 
Aryan, and Alexander a Greek of the Greeks. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

THE Orient which Alexander now confronted 
took its shape as a political organisation from 
the conquests of the Persian Cyrus, beginning 
about 550 B.C. The Eastern world was then divided 
among three great empires: the Median, standing 
since the end of the preceding century on the ruins 
of the Assyrian Empire of Nineveh, and having its 
seat at Ecbataha (modern Hamadan) ; the Babylon- 
ian Empire, occupying Mesopotamia and Syria; and 
the Lydian Empire of Crcesus, who controlled the 
whole of Asia Minor, and amassed from tribute and 
from the gold-mines of Pactolus such vast stores of 
the precious metal as the West had never dreamed 
of. To the temple at Delphi alone he made presents 
of gold bullion amounting to 270 talents ($370,000). 
The Persians were an Iranian people, a branch of 
the Indo-European or Aryan race, who had long 
occupied, in almost unbroken connection with their 
Scythian kinsmen to the north of the Caspian, the 
highlands of Bactria and Parthia. Early in the 
seventh century B.C. these Iranian tribes began 

187 



1 88 Alexander the Great. 

pushing out toward the west and the south, and 
one of them, the Medes, had brought the Assyrian 
Empire to its fall. The Persians, pushing farther to 
the south, located their capital in Susa (Shushan), 
until, with the conquests of Cyrus, Ecbatana, and 
with it the Median realm, fell into their hands 

(550 B.C.). 

Cyrus was the energetic, intelligent leader of a 
vigorous, warlike people, unspoiled by civilisation. 
His conquests meant that an Oriental, essentially 
Semitic, civilisation had submitted to the leadership 
of Aryan aggressiveness. 

In 546 B.C., only four years after his victory over 
the Medes, he conquered Croesus, King of Lydia, in 
battle, took Sardis, his capital, and absorbed his 
realm. In 538 B.C. Babylon also fell into his hands, 
and so the entire Eastern world became united under 
Aryan sway into one great empire, which, after the 
tribe of the conqueror, has since been called the 
Persian Empire. It was this empire which provided 
the passive soul of orientalism with an organised 
body and such will and fist to smite as it possessed. 
As army and as government it was the outward 
mechanism with which Alexander two centuries later 
had to deal, and so the brief story of its builders and 
their labours concerns us here. 

Though there is a lack of thoroughly authentic 
accounts of Cyrus's life and deeds in detail, there 
can be no doubt concerning his character as a whole. 
The extraordinary nobility and generosity of his 
character are reflected, to quote the words of Eduard 
Meyer, " alike in the accounts of the Persians whom 



The Persian Empire. 189 

he led to world-empire, of the Jews whom he freed, 
and of the Greeks whom he subjugated." His 
generosity toward defeated foes, his readiness to 
hear and accept advice, and his tolerance toward 
local institutions became a standard which his suc- 
cessors on the throne tended to follow. He was 
himself a pious adherent of the Ahura Mazda cult, 
the Iranian faith, since known to the world through 
the doctrines of its great reformer and purifier, 
Zoroaster; but he made no attempt to impress his 
religion upon the state. The traditional religions 
of each state or tribe were respected and even cul- 
tivated as the proper form for such state or tribe. 
Thus his attitude toward the Jahveh worship of the 
Jews was such as to warrant the Jewish chronicler 
in speaking of him as an adherent of the cult. (See 
Ezra i., 2.) 

Cambyses, his son (529-522 B.C.), added Egypt 
to the empire, the conquest of which had been 
completed by the capture of Memphis (525 B.C.). 
Ethiopia and large tracts of northern Africa were 
also brought beneath his sway; but Carthage, which 
was then emerging as a controlling power in the 
western Mediterranean, was left untouched. The 
reports attribute his failure to advance against it to 
the unwillingness of the Phoenicians, upon whom he 
depended for a fleet, to cooperate with him against 
their own kin. In 522 B.C. he was recalled from 
Egypt by the revolt of the Pseudo-Smerdis, but, 
while on his way, died in Syria from the results of 
a self-inflicted but accidental wound. The usurper 
Gaumata, a Median of the priestly caste of the 



I90 Alexander the Great. 

Magi, who had falsely claimed to be Smerdis, the 
brother of Cambyses, a brother who, before the ex- 
pedition against Egypt, had, as a mild precautionary 
measure, been secretly murdered at Cambyses's in- 
stance, now assumed the throne, and the succession 
of the Achaemenids seemed to be hopelessly lost. 
The very possibility of such an occurrence throws 
into boldest light the horrible perversions and the 
grim hazards to which a monster autocracy such as 
this empire was exposed. 

A year after the death of Cambyses, Darius, the 
son of Hystaspes, who was nearest heir to the throne, 
aided by six Persian noblemen, forced his way into 
the usurper's stronghold, Sikajauvati in Media, and 
slew him and all his attendants (521 B.C.). For 
nearly two years the empire was in turmoil. One 
after another, pretenders after the model of Gaumata 
arose in various parts of the realm, and at times the 
whole structure threatened to fall in pieces. Twice 
Babylon itself revolted, but otherwise the revolts 
were chiefly confined to the Aryan elements of the 
east and the north, the Medians, Persians, and 
Armenians. 

At last, through the consummate leadership and 
military skill of Darius, the empire was, in 519 B.C., 
brought into quiet, and a majestic realm extending 
from the Hellespont to the Indus, and from the 
Jaxartes to the Upper Nile, and embracing on the 
modern map the territory of Turkestan, Afghanis- 
tan, Persia, Turkey in Asia, northern Arabia, and 
Egypt, yielded obedience to a single man. 

Darius, though not its founder, was really its 



The Persian Empire. 1 9 1 

organiser and maker. His reign, extending from 
521 to 486 B.C., marks the final consolidation of the 
Orient to meet the thrust of the Occident. Its or- 
ganisation into a whole, and its very existence as a 
state, furnished the basis for the still greater edifice 
that Alexander was to rear. 

The reign of Darius covers also a period of rapid 
change in the national life of Greece. When it began 
Athens was under the Peisistratids; when it ended, 
Marathon had been fought. By the reforms of 
Cleisthenes, Athens had become a homogeneous 
state founded upon the unified population of Attica. 
Through its commerce, its colonies, and its foothold 
on the Hellespont, it was coming to be a leading 
factor in Greek affairs, and already looked forth to 
the control of the ^Egean. Sparta had established 
a positive control of the Peloponnesus by its absorp- 
tion of Arcadia, Elis, Argos, and yEgina. This 
strong military state was to furnish the nucleus of a 
solid Greek force with which to meet the aggressions 
of Persia. The older dominant elements, Argos, 
Corinth, Chalcis, Thebes, the Ionians, had slipped 
into the background, and the period of the Athenian- 
Spartan dualism was begun. 

The period represented a critical time for Hellen- 
ism. For three centuries since the reestablishment 
of order and rebloom of civilisation after the dis- 
lodgments consequent upon the fall of the Achaean 
states, Greece had prospered and expanded almost 
without restraint. Her colonies had occupied the 
coasts and islands of the Euxine, Hellespont, ^Egean, 
and central Mediterranean almost at will. The 



192 Alexander the Great. 

control of the Mediterranean seemed to fall to the 
Greeks. But the rise of the Persian Empire on the 
east, and of the Carthaginian allied with the Etrus- 
can power on the west, gradually set bounds to this 
extension. Between the upper and the nether mill- 
stones Hellenism was sorely threatened with ex- 
tinction. The movement of a new intellectual life 
and a new spiritual consciousness, like the freshness 
of a stirring breeze, were just making themselves 
felt throughout the Greek world. It contained the 
hope of intellectual freedom for the world. The 
issue of the pending struggle was heavy with fate 
for the destiny of mankind. 

During the thirty-five years of Darius's reign were 
set in array the forces for a great world-struggle — a 
struggle heavy with fate for the destiny of mankind. 
It is well said by Eduard Meyer: " Darius stands at 
the turn between two world-epochs. He closes the 
development of the old Orient; he gives the later 
time its shape. In the evening of his days the 
battle of Marathon marks the beginning of a new 
epoch in the development of the Mediterranean 
world." 

The eastern and western frontiers of his empire 
were separated by a stretch of twenty-five to twenty- 
seven hundred miles — double the air-line distance 
from Paris to St. Petersburg, four times the distance 
from Paris to Vienna, and something more than the 
distance from San Francisco to Washington. The 
problem of organising the government of this vast 
territory, with its variety of races, languages, cus- 
toms, religions, was a serious one. In dealing with 



The Persia7i Empire. 193 

it Darius showed extraordinary wisdom, and his 
solution, defective as it may seem from the ideal 
point of view, was probably the only one possible at 
the time. It at least furnished a basis upon which 
might gradually have been built up a secure and 
effective structure. During the almost two centuries 
of its existence it proved itself well adapted to the 
conditions which it organised, and its only peril 
came from without. * 

Following the precedents set by Cyrus, Darius 
sought to disturb as little as was consistent with the 
maintenance of the imperial government the tradi- 
tional customs, laws, and religion of the different 
nations and tribes composing the empire. The 
local forms of government were left as far as possible 
unchanged. The half-nomadic tribes retained their 
government by chiefs, many districts kept their 
native princes, the free cities might have oligarchy, 
tyrant, or democracy, as they pleased — all, so long 
as the tribute was paid and the military quota filled. 
No attempt was made to establish a law code valid 
for the entire empire, but each district, tribe, or 
nation was in general allowed to use its own heredi- 
tary laws. These general features offer in some re- 
gards a striking forecast of that which has been the 
greatest element of solidity in the English Empire. 

The whole empire, for convenience of administra- 
tion and oversight, was, however, divided into not 
less than twenty satrapies, or provinces, over each 
of which was set in control a satrap, or viceroy, 
directly and personally responsible to the King. It 
was the duty of the satraps to maintain the peace 



194 Alexander the Great. 

within their several provinces, to represent and 
maintain the authority of the empire, to raise the 
tribute, to attend to the levies of troops, to have 
care for the public works of the empire, roads, har- 
bours, canals, and to regulate the money standards. 
They possessed even the right of silver coinage. 
Within the provinces their authority was absolute, 
except as against the King. They were the judges 
of final appeal, and the only judges on issues be- 
tween the cities, the tribes, the districts, and the 
native princes. In military affairs they were supreme. 
The actual details of local government were, how- 
ever, left, as has already been said, to the local 
authorities, whatever they might be. 

Unity of administration, so far as it can be said 
to have existed at all, was dependent upon the visits 
of the King to the various provinces, or of a con- 
fidential commissioner personally representing the 
King. Such an overseer was known officially as the 
" King's Eye." Only one person at a time, it 
seems, held the office. He corresponded neither 
to premier nor private secretary, but was something 
of both. He stood outside of and above the author- 
ity of satraps and army commanders, and through 
his subordinates scattered about the empire kept 
close watch upon the doings of all governors, officers, 
and officials, in the personal interest of the King. 
A system of spies known as the " King's Ears " 
also existed, probably in coordination with the same 
department. The department, taken as a whole, 
performed the function of a secret police service, or 
of the " spotters " employed by the treasurer of a 



The Persian Empire. 195 

modern corporation. A Persian proverb said well : 
** The King has many eyes and ears." As a check 
upon the independent military authority of the 
satraps, the control of the great fortresses command- 
ing important strategic points was kept in the hands 
of the central power. 

The most effective expedient for maintaining 
union was found, however, in the system of great 
military roads, to the establishment of which Darius 
gave the keenest attention. While there is no evid- 
ence that they were elaborately constructed roads 
in the Roman sense, they were passable routes, pro- 
vided with bridges. A courier-post system was 
maintained upon them for expediting communica- 
tion between the different parts of the empire. At 
intervals of fourteen or fifteen miles post-houses and 
khans were located, at which postmen with swift 
horses were always in readiness to take up a letter 
and advance it to the next station. Herodotus 
(viii., 98) describes the service as follows: 

" There exists nothing mortal more swift than these 
couriers. And this is the way the Persians have contrived 
it: There are as many men and horses posted at intervals 
along the road as there are days in the trip, one man and 
horse assigned to each day's run; and neither snow nor 
rain nor heat nor night prevents them from accomplishing 
the run assigned to them, and at the fullest speed. The 
first runner hands over his consignment to the second, the 
second to the third, and so it goes from hand to hand on 
to its destination, like the torch-race celebrated in honour 
of Hephaestus among the Greeks." 

The roads were under strict military surveillance, 



iq6 Alexander the Great. 

and travellers, in passing the stations, were com- 
pelled to give an account of themselves and their 
errand. Distances were measured and carefully in- 
dicated along the roads, and hence the ever-recurring 
" parasang -' (English league, German Stunde, three 
miles) which lightened our way through Xenophon's 
Anabasis. 

A famous road was the one which, as a life-artery 
of the empire, joined Sardis, at the far west in 
Lydia, to Susa, the capital. It was fifteen hundred 
miles long, and at the common rate of ordinary 
travel, three months were required to traverse it; 
but by the government couriers a despatch could be 
forwarded from Susa to Sardis within a week. 
Every fifteen miles there was a station, or khan, 
where travellers could find shelter and refreshment 
for man and beast. These were under royal con- 
trol, and Herodotus, widely travelled himself, does 
not hesitate to call them " most excellent." The 
road made its way up out of Lydia, over the high- 
lands of Phrygia and Galatia, across the Halys 
River, through Cappadocia, and over the mountain- 
passes of the Taurus, across the Upper Euphrates, 
and on into southern Armenia. Holding still to 
the east, it crossed the Tigris and the ancient trade- 
route from Trebizond and the Euxine, which in far 
earlier days had made Nineveh great, and, evading 
Mesopotamia, pushed on through the modern land 
of the Kurds, till, rounding the mountains, it turned 
south through modern Persia. All the diverse life 
of the countries it traversed was drawn into its paths. 
Carians and Cilicians, Phrygians and Cappadocians, 



The Persian Empire. 197 

staid Lydians, sociable Greeks, crafty Armenians, 
rude traders from the Euxine shores, nabobs of 
Babylon, Medes and Persians, galloping couriers 
mounted on their Bokhara ponies or fine Arab 
steeds, envoys with train and state, peasants driving 
their donkeys laden with skins of oil or wine or 
sacks of grain, stately caravans bearing the wares 
and fabrics of the South to exchange for the metals, 
slaves, and grain of the North, travellers and traders 
seeking to know and exploit the world — all were 
there, and all were safe under the protection of an 
empire the roadway of which pierced the strata of 
many tribes and many cultures, and helped set the 
world a-mixing. 

The organisation and regulation of Alexander's 
empire was later made possible through the roads, 
and they were the conductors by which East and 
West were joined and the first cosmopolitanism 
brought into being. 

The vastness and the resources of the Persian Em- 
pire of Darius can best, perhaps, be measured in 
terms of the tribute it was able to collect. Partial 
data for this are supplied us by Herodotus. The 
satrapy of Babylon furnished an annual tribute of 
1000 talents (say $1,400,000, reckoning the Babylon- 
ian talent at $1400); that of Egypt, 700 talents 
($1,000,000); Media, 450 talents; Syria, 350 talents; 
and so down to the lowest amount, that paid by the 
satrapy of the Sattagydae of the far East, 170 talents. 
This was essentially a land-tax — a tax on the pro- 
ducts of the soil. Babylonia, as having the most 
fruitful and best cultivated land, naturally paid the 



198 Alexander the Great. 

highest tax. The tax was assessed upon the sat- 
rapies by the central government, and the satraps 
were responsible for its collection. This land-tax 
yielded for the whole empire an annual total of 7600 
talents (about $11,000,000). 

This was, however, only the beginning. None of 
this money was used for the maintenance of army, 
government, or court, each of which, it appears, was 
supported directly by contributions in kind. There 
were, too, various other forms of tribute, the amount 
of which it is impossible to estimate. Some ex- 
amples may, however, be given. The Arabian tribes 
subject to the empire paid an annual tribute of 1000 
talents of frankincense. The Colchians furnished 
annually 200 slaves. The gold-mines of the Him- 
alayas paid 360 talents. The renting of the fishery 
rights on the Nile canal yielded 240 talents. In- 
dividual cities or districts had assigned to them 
burdens of honour. Thus, scattered through the 
narratives of Xenophon and Herodotus, we hear of 
one community that was under obligation to supply 
the Queen's girdle, another her necklaces, another 
her tiara, another the ornaments for the hair. The 
expenses of maintaining detachments of troops or 
armies, or of providing the table of the King and his 
suite when on journeys, were levied upon neighbour- 
ing cities or districts. Thus the city of Abdera was 
called upon to feed Xerxes's army, a million men, 
for one day, and the cost, as Herodotus tells us, was 
300 talents ($360,000). The money tribute went 
chiefly to swell the treasure hoards, which on Alex- 
ander's capture of the strongholds proved so vast. 



The Persian Empire. 199 

Thus in Persepolis he found 120,000 talents of gold 
and silver. This, if reckoned in talents of silver, 
means $175,000,000; if one-third was talents of 
gold, $800,000,000. The treasury of Susa yielded, 
besides this, 50,000 talents ($70,000,000 at least), 
and that of Pasargadae 6000 talents ($8,500,000). 

In addition to the land-tax, each satrapy was 
obliged to furnish a certain quota of men and sup- 
plies for the army. Thus Cappadocia provided an- 
nually 50,000 sheep, 2000 mules, and 1500 horses; 
Media, double this number. Cilicia furnished 360 
grey horses, Armenia 10,000 foals, Egypt 120,000 
bushels of wheat; Chalybon furnished wine for 
the court, Colchis sent an annual quota of Caucas- 
ian slaves, and Babylon 500 eunuchs for court 
service. 

The empire embraced a territory of some two 
million square miles, three-fifths that of the United 
States, and its population may be estimated at fifty 
millions, about that of the same territory now. 

Susa, and not Babylon, Darius made the capital 
of his empire. Here he built a great city, the circuit 
of which, Strabo says, was 120 stades, a stade being 
about a ninth of a mile. It was 250 miles farther to 
the east than Babylon, but still nearer the centre of 
the empire's domain. It was, furthermore, near to 
original Persian soil. Babylon was still an alien 
land, with an alien religion and civilisation. At 
Persepolis, 300 miles farther to the south-east, on 
his native soil, Darius also built a new residence 
city with strong fortifications, of which Diodorus 
says: 



200 Alexander the Great. 

" The citadel of Persepolis was surrounded by three 
walls, of which the first was sixteen cubits [twenty-four 
feet] high, and encircled by turrets adorned with costly 
ornamentation. The second wall had similar ornaments, 
but was twice as high. The third wall formed a square, 
and was sixty cubits [ninety feet] high. ... In the 
city were several richly adorned buildings for the recep- 
tion of the King and the generals, and treasuries for the 
revenue. To the east of the citadel, at a distance of 
four plethra [one-half mile], lies a mountain called ' the 
Royal Mountain,' in which are the tombs of the kings." 

Ecbatana, the ancient Median capital, was also used 
as a residence, especially in the heat of the summer, 
and at times also the kings resided at Babylon ; yet 
Susa always remained the capital proper throughout 
the entire Achsemenid dynasty. 

The court of the King was maintained with extra- 
ordinary dignity and splendour. The person of 
royalty was surrounded with everything capable of 
giving it elevation, dignity, and charm in the eyes 
of the masses. Surrounded by a vast body of at- 
tendants, body-guards, servants, eunuchs, and court 
officials, the King was removed as far as possible 
from the vulgar eye. He gave audience seated on 
a golden throne, over which was stretched a bald- 
achin of purple, supported on four golden pillars 
glittering with precious stones. In his presence his 
courtiers prostrated themselves in the dust. Who- 
ever stood in his presence to address him hid his 
hands in the sleeves of his mantle, as token of his 
abnegation of will to restrain or harm. He was 
never seen on foot. He sometimes appeared on 



The Persian Empire. 201 

horseback, more often in a chariot. Guards and 
scourgers went before his car to open the way. 
There followed the chariots of Mithra, and Magi 
carrying the sacred fire. Around him and behind 
him were the staff-bearers and his body-guard. On 
solemn occasions the ways were purified with frank- 
incense and strewn with myrtle. The King's attire 
was valued, Plutarch says, at 12,000 talents (about 
$17,000,000). 

Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, ranked as the 
Queen of Darius. Among his wives of second rank 
the first place was held by the daughter of Gobryas, 
who had borne him three sons before he came to the 
throne. Below the secondary wives were the con- 
cubines, who formed a numerous body. Three hun- 
dred and twenty concubines of the last Darius (III.) 
were found among the captives after Alexander's 
victory at Issus. The stories which passed current 
among the Greeks concerning the extent of the 
kings' retinue and the lavishness of their court, and 
which come to us particularly through the pages of 
Xenophon in his Cyrus 's Education and Training, 
and of Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes, are the 
natural tribute which the wonder of a plainer people 
pays to the grandeur, luxury, and circumstance of 
an older civilisation. The chief places in the army, 
in the government, and at the court were held by 
members of the Persian nobility. As a machine of 
government the Persian Empire west of the Zagrus 
Mountains was essentially a foreign domination. 
This showed itself in the diverse religious systems. 

Darius was an earnest adherent of the traditiona 



202 Alexa7tder the Great. 

Ahura Mazda cult of his fathers, in the form it had 
received through the teachings of the prophet Zoro- 
aster (Zarathushtra), who not improbably lived and 
taught in Bactria in the days of Darius's father, 
Hystaspes. It was far from having the codified 
conventional form which it later received, pre- 
eminently under the Sassanid emperors (from the 
third century A.D.), when made a " book-religion "• 
based upon the collection of sacred writings known 
as the Zend-Avesta, and organised into a formal 
state church. The religion still cultivated at this 
day by the Parsees of north-western India represents 
in further development the form given to it under 
the Sassanids. The Zend-Avesta, though un- 
doubtedly containing as a nucleus older elements 
dating from as early as the sixth century B.C., took 
its shape as a collection and an authoritative sacred 
book presumably in the second and third centuries 
of the Christian era. 

The Ahura Mazda religion of Darius and his suc- 
cessors was the religion of all the Iranian peoples, 
and, as such, a natural development out of the older 
Aryan faith, on the basis of which and under the 
control of the Brahman priesthood the early Indian 
religion known to us through the Vedic books was 
developed. Like its Indian parallel, this Iranian 
religion was administered exclusively by an heredit- 
ary priesthood. Only the priest could perform the 
ritual. In Media one branch of the priesthood 
became predominant over all others, and, receiving 
the favour and recognition of the new empire, be- 
came the famous caste of the Magi. The priests, 



The Persian Empire. 203 

however, never acquired, as in India, political in- 
fluence. 

Fundamentally characteristic for the whole atti- 
tude and influence of the religion is it, that, as a 
system of practical-ethical, rather than speculative 
bearings, it had its relation not so much to the 
tribal or national whole, after the manner, for in- 
stance, of the Hebrew Jahveh cult, as to the life of 
the individual. It addressed itself to individuals 
of whatever race or tribe. Though the whole tribe 
joined in worship of the " Wise Spirit," it was as 
individuals that they followed out the principles of 
his being and the teachings of his law. Not as 
members of the tribe did they become his followers 
and devotees, but upon the doing of each one for 
himself did it depend whether he was to rank as a 
" follower of Mazda " in this life and to obtain im- 
mortality and blessedness in the world beyond. 

Varuna, the heaven-god of the Indian Vedas, is 
this same Ahura Mazda. The Vedic pair, Mitra- 
Varuna, corresponds to the Iranian Mithra-Ahura, 
and it is not an improbable supposition that origin- 
ally Mitra was the sun, Varuna the moon. This 
Varuna or Ahura is among both peoples not only a 
cosmological but also a moral force, but in Iran it 
is the moral side which receives the emphasis. He 
is indeed the maker and upholder of the world, the 
author of order in the movements of the universe, 
the source of all power as well as of all blessing, the 
representative of all power and majesty and intelli- 
gence, but as the god of order and light he is the 
embodiment and vindicator of all truth and of all 



204 Alexander the Great. 

purity. The development of this symbolism of light 
by transferring its significance from the realm of 
nature to the realm of personal conduct — a transfer 
which is undoubtedly in large measure attributable 
to the influence of Zoroaster — gave to the character 
of the chief god Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), and so to 
his cult, the ethical bearing which distinguishes 
them so markedly from their Indian counterparts. 
Over against Ormuzd and his attendant genii of 
light and cleanness stand the powers of darkness, 
the evil spirits, the daivas, agents of darkness, death, 
and the lie. At their head is Angramanju (Ahri- 
man), the great demon of darkness, uncleanness, and 
untruth. 

Between the two opposing forces continued con- 
flict goes on, and out of it issues forth the experience 
of individuals and the fate of peoples. Ormuzd 
uses the fire as his weapon. It gives light and it 
purifies. In the sacrifice the flame and the sacred 
formula or hymn give help, succour, and strength to 
the god in his struggle with Ahriman. He encour- 
ages the tilling of the fields, the growth of the 
flocks, and the prosperous, settled life of men. His 
devotees are the farmers and the herders. The 
nomads, who wander about without home or flocks, 
who burn and destroy, and disturb the peaceful life 
of quiet tillers of the soil are the creatures of Ahriman 
and agents of the daivas. 

These are the simple, self-consistent elements of 
the religion as it existed in Darius's day, at least in 
the purer form known to the upper and more intel- 
ligent classes. In the faith of the folk-masses there 



The Pei'sian Empire. 205 

survived undoubtedly many of the forms of belief 
derived from the old Aryan religion, and these at 
times emerged to greater or less extent, asserting 
their place in the religious scheme. This, for in- 
stance, is notably true of the old Mithra cult, known 
in Vedic religion as the worship of Mitra, the god of 
sunlight, in close association with that of Varuna 
(originally the moon ?). The cult of Mithra as sun- 
god, especially after its official recognition by Art- 
axerxes II., came to assume an important place in 
the religion and combined with other secondary 
cults at times, and, until met by decisive reforms, 
threatened to impair the purity of the Zoroastrian 
faith. As it was, its popularity with the lower 
classes spread it in later times far and wide even 
beyond the bounds of what had been the Persian 
Empire, and accompanied by mystery forms it was 
widely introduced into Greece and Rome in the days 
of the Roman emperors. 

Though Zoroastrianism was the recognised re- 
ligion of the court, the great masses of the popula- 
tion of Mesopotamia remained faithful to the old 
Babylonian religion, which, though modified by 
centuries of Semitic domination, was essentially the 
product of the civilisation antedating the coming of 
the Semites, which we call by the name Sumero- 
Accadian. This was in substance a practical system 
of controlling and appeasing, by means of prayers, 
offerings, and incantations, the spirits or demons 
which are active in the world of nature. These 
demons, conceived of in weird forms of animals or 
men, or monstrosities embodying forms of both, are 



206 Alexander the Great. 

the source of those strange types of grjffins, dragons, 
unicorns, hippogriffs, chimeras, which later, through 
the medium of art, found their way to the Western 
world, and have since held standard place among 
the materials of artistic composition. 

The great gods who held sway in heaven and 
earth were such as Anu, the heaven-god ; Ea, the 
god of the depths, who resides in the water; Bargu, 
the god of the air, who sends the storm ; Marduk, 
the city-god of Babylon ; Nana, the goddess of 
Uruk, often identified with Istar; who are all sus- 
tainers of society and the order of the world, and 
in constant conflict with the demons. These powers 
that govern the universe betray their will in the 
movements of the stars, preeminently in those of 
the sun and moon and five great planets. Hence 
astrology and the holy number 7, together with as- 
tronomy and the numbers 12, 60, 120, based on the 
annual course of the sun by months through the 
constellations, and applied to the arrangement of 
weights and measures, came as a Babylonian con- 
tribution to the world's repertory of forms, sciences, 
and delusions. 

After Darius's death, in 486 B.C., the empire he 
had organised, holding itself together by very inertia, 
despite the growing independence of the satraps, 
passed down in essentially the form he had given it, 
for a century and a half, through the hands of his 
successors: Xerxes (486-465 B.C.), whose famous 
expedition against Greece failed at Salamis (480 
B.C.); Artaxerxes I., called Longimanus (465-424 
B.C.); Darius II., called Nothus (424-405 B.C.);, 



The Persian Empire. 207 

Artaxerxes II., called Mnemon (404-358 B.C.), 
against whom arose the revolt of his brother Cyrus, 
failing at Cunaxa (401 B.C.); Artaxerxes III., called 
Ochus (358-337 B.C.), a ruler of great energy, under 
whom Egypt, after a period of independence, was 
rejoined to the empire (345 B.C.); Arses (337-336 
B.C.); and when Alexander entered Asia, Darius 
III., called Codomannus, was upon the throne. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CARRYING THE WAR INTO ASIA. 
334 B.C. 

IN the early spring of 334 B.C., Alexander was 
ready for his advance against Persia. The 
odds were great. Persia covered a territory 
fifty times as great as his own, and had a population 
twenty-five times as great. He had no ships that 
could be measured against the Phoenician fleet, 
which, in Persian service, controlled the ^Egean. 
An Athenian fleet of 350 triremes lay idle in the 
harbours of Athens, but political expediency pre- 
vented him from calling for more than twenty of 
them. The plan of his campaign contemplated 
solely a test of strength on the land. He proposed, 
as the issue showed, to render the Persian supremacy 
on the sea a vain distinction, by robbing the fleet 
of a coast from which to operate. 

With an army of 30,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry 
he entered a country which, under Xerxes, had sent 
a million armed men against Greece. By the terms 
of the league which Philip had made with the Greek 

208 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 209 

states at Corinth, he had the right of naming the 
size of the contingent which each state should furnish 
to the army. Though this agreement was renewed 
under Alexander, for some reason, which neither he 
has told nor any ancient historian surmised, he chose 
not to avail himself of it beyond a limited extent. 
He undoubtedly preferred a small disciplined army 
upon which he could absolutely rely. Except for 
a body of 1500 Thessalian cavalry under Macedonian 
command and from 5000 to 7000 infantry furnished 
by various states and called in the accounts the 
" allied infantry," his army was composed of men 
of the north, Thracians and Macedonians, tried and 
true. 

The Persian state had at its control enormous re- 
sources of money. Alexander, after equipping his 
army, had in hand, to say nothing of his debts, 
which some say were abundant, only seventy talents 
(say $80,000), and, as Plutarch adds, no more than 
thirty days' provisions for his troops. Still he gave 
himself pains to know if all his friends were duly 
provided for in their outfit for the campaign, and 
whatsoever he found they lacked he provided — not 
with cash, but by assigning to them lands or villages 
or revenues from certain parts of his realm. At last, 
when he had in this wise apportioned almost all he 
had to give, Perdiccas, in some solicitude, asked him 
what he had left for himself, and he replied: " My 
hopes." " In these," rejoined Perdiccas, " your 
soldiers will be your partners," and thereupon re- 
fused, along with others, to accept what had been 

assigned him. 

14 



2iO Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

The relatively insignificant resources with which 
Alexander set out upon his task give a touch of the 
quixotic to his enterprise. Men have judged him a 
harebrained enthusiast whose successes were due to 
dash and luck. But he reckoned well with what he 
had to deal. Behind the appearance of reckless 
dash were concealed a careful estimate of conditions 
and a definite and consistent plan of action. He 
knew that Persia was weak in its vastness, and that 
its bulk gave it, through inertia, a continuance of 
existence only because no smooth stone was fitted 
to the sling. 

With all Greece sulkily holding aloof from the 
war, and Greek mercenaries constituting the reliable 
strength of the Persian army, he called himself the 
leader of the Greeks, and entered the contest with a 
compact force composed of soldiers most of whom 
the Greeks would have called barbarians. But he 
knew his army. It was the best-disciplined force in 
existence. He had seen its action, and, small as it 
was, he could trust it. The weakness of Persia he 
had ample means of knowing. Had not the experi- 
ence of the ten thousand Greeks who, sixty years 
before, entered to the heart of the empire and then 
retreated complacently and safely, proved it amply 
enough ? A band of professional soldiers of fortune 
picked up in the soldier marts of Greece, they had 
pushed their way (401 B.C.), along with a dashing 
young prince who aspired offhand, as if it were a 
game of polo, to seize his brother's crown, seventeen 
hundred miles across the empire to within fifty miles 
of the gates of Babylon. Here, joined with a hun- 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 2 1 1 

dred thousand Asiatics, they fought against half a 
million or more, and for their part won and would 
have gained for the young prince the prize he sought, 
had he not lost his life by the needless risks he took. 
Then when they found no other candidate willing to 
risk a throw for the crown, they turned back, made 
their way out to the north by Armenia, and found 
the shores of the Euxine well within a year from the 
time of first setting out. Xenophon has made a 
genial story of it all in his Anabasis. 

The Persians had learned the value of Greek 
troops, and now, in Alexander's time, the only 
practical righting strength their armies possessed 
were the Greek mercenaries. Alexander had thirty 
thousand of the latter to face at Issus (333 B.C.). 
Professionalism in war had developed itself in Greece 
with the Peloponnesian war (43 1-404 B. C.). Military 
methods suddenly outgrew the capacity of the old- 
fashioned citizen soldiery. War changed from sport 
to business. Political Napoleons like Dionysius of 
Syracuse, then Jason of Pherae, then Philip of Mace- 
don, came to see the need for their purpose of a 
standing army of trained, professional soldiers? and 
the free states were forced to keep pace with them. 
First were hired the supplementary troops, Rhodian 
slingers, Cretan bowmen, light-armed soldiers from 
the West and the North, while the hoplites, or 
heavy-armed, remained of the citizen class; but later 
even they yielded place to the professionals. Con- 
servative Sparta held to the old way, but she found 
the times too fast for her, and went to the wall. 
Progressive, mercantile Athens took kindly to mer- 



212 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

cenaries. Her citizens early tired of the game of 
war, and, as Hans Droysen remarks, " The last con- 
tests for the ' freedom ' of Greece were fought mostly 
by mercenaries, hired with Persian money." 

Corinth and Taenarum were the chief markets 
where soldiers were hired. Arcadians (the East- 
Tennesseeans of Greece), Achaeans, ^Etolians, Thes- 
salians, furnished the most of the men. Like 
carpenters and barbers, they brought their own 
tools, but received pay and food, and, if all went 
well, a share of the booty. Strange to say, mer- 
cenary service seems not to have incurred the 
reproach of disloyalty, even when rendered to bar- 
barians against a Greek state. Patriotism, for a 
Greek, did not go much beyond his own city. 
Political and military movements were now coming 
to concern mostly larger units than the city, but a 
patriotism had not been developed to fit the new 
scale. Love of the sport and a chance for gain were 
excuse enough for a young man who left home and 
fought in the armies of strangers. He was looked 
upon by his townsfolk much as a ball-player nowa- 
days* would be who should forsake his native Bing- 
hamton or Elmira to accept a position on the New 
York or Cincinnati nine. 

In Macedonia Alexander left behind him a force 
of twelve thousand infantry and fifteen hundred 
cavalry, just half the native army, under command 
of Antipater, the trusty sexagenarian, who was now 
made regent and the European representative of the 
King. He had enjoyed the fullest confidence of 
Philip, and was noted for his austere life and puritan- 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 213 

ical ideas. The stories told about him characterise 
Philip as well. When Philip was starting in for a 
drinking-debauch, he would sometimes say, so Car- 
ystius reports: " Now we can go ahead and get full; 
it 's enough that Antipater keeps sober." Another 
is this: " Once Philip was playing at dice, when 
Antipater was announced. After a moment of hes- 
itation, Philip pushed the board under the sofa." 

Alexander, having once set out from Pella, ad- 
vanced directly along the coast toward the Helles- 
pont (Dardanelles), by way of Amphipolis and 
Abdera, and in twenty days had covered the 350 
miles to Sestus, where the passage was at its narrow- 
est (4400 feet). Here was the spot where, 146 years 
before, Xerxes had stretched his famous bridge of 
boats, and — any one may guess how many years 
before — Leander swam across to make his nightly 
rendezvous with Aphrodite's priestess, Hero. 

The Macedonian forces under Parmenion, when, 
the year before, they had retreated from Asiatic 
soil, had prudently retained possession of Abydus, 
situated near the site of the modern Turkish fort 
Nagara, on a tongue of land opposite Sestus. Thus 
the opportunity of crossing at pleasure was secured. 
The greater part of the army was left to cross here 
under the oversight of Parmenion, at whose disposal 
for this purpose there were 160 triremes, besides a 
number of trading-vessels. 

Alexander himself, now that the coast was clear, 
and no opposition to be expected in disembarking 
on the other side, was able to indulge his antiquarian 
instincts by arranging for a ceremonious landing a 



214 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

little to the west, at the plain of Troy, on the very- 
beach where Agamemnon had drawn up his ships. 
So, accompanied by a portion of the infantry, he 
moved farther along the northern coast to Elaeus 
(modern Eski Hissarlik), about fifteen miles distant, 
where the breadth of the Hellespont (two and a half 
miles) is three times that at Sestus. After paying 
his respects at the tomb of Protesilaus, the first hero 
to land, as well as to fall, in the Trojan war, and 
offering sacrifices accompanied with a prayer for 
better luck, he started across. The flagship he 
steered with his own hands. In the middle of the 
channel he sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and the 
Nereids, and poured them a libation from a golden 
goblet. His ship was first to touch the land. From 
its prow he hurled a spear into the soil, and then 
leaped ashore in full armour, the first to land. Al- 
tars to Zeus, Athena, and Hercules were erected on 
the spot, as well as at the one where he had em- 
barked. 

Then he betook himself to the site of ancient 
Troy, and without suffering the perverting doubts 
of Demetrius or Lechevalier as to its location, he 
went straight to Ilium, the modern Hissarlik. Here 
he offered sacrifice in the temple of Athena, and 
dedicated as votive offering a suit of his own armour, 
taking in exchange some of the consecrated armour 
that, tradition claimed, had been there since the 
Trojan war. This he afterwards caused to be carried 
before him, by specially appointed shield-bearers, 
when he entered battle. He also sacrificed to Priam, 
who, according to one legend, was slain by Neopto- 



334 B.c.l Carrying the War into Asia. 215 

lemus, in order to avert his displeasure from himself 
as Neoptolemus's descendant. Special honours he 
paid to the tomb of Achilles. " He anointed his 
grave, and in company with his friends, as the an- 
cient custom is, ran to it naked and laid a garland 
upon it, declaring, as he did so, how fortunate he 
esteemed Achilles in that in life he found a faithful 
friend, and in death a great man to herald his 
deeds." His friend Hephaestion is said to have 
paid similar honours to the tomb of Patroclus. 
Games also were held. After receiving the felicit- 
ations of the dignitaries of the neighbourhood, in- 
cluding the picturesque Chares, an Athenian, but 
now a free-lance and lord of Sigeum, and after 
having ordered the rebuilding of Ilium and encour- 
aged the assemblage of a population there by 
promise of freedom from taxation, he set out to 
join the body of his army, which was encamped at 
Arisbe, near Abydus. Of the infantry, 5000 were 
mercenaries, 7000 allies, 6000 tribesmen of the 
Thracian and Illyrian north, and 12,000 native 
Macedonians; of the cavalry, 1500 were Macedon- 
ians, 1500 Thessalians, the rest Greeks, Thracians, 
and Paeonians. 

The highest standard of efficiency in the army 
was represented by the famous cavalry troop com- 
posed of Macedonian knights and called the hetairoi, 
or companions. It was at first divided into eight 
squadrons (ilai), one of them being composed of 
picked men and called the agema. Though the 
numbers were not definitely fixed, it appears from 
incidental allusions that each He contained about 



216 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

150 men. The whole troop we may therefore esti- 
mate approximately at 1200. The term " com- 
panions," or " cavalry companions " (to distinguish 
them from the pezetairoi, or infantry companions), 
is sometimes applied to the whole troop, sometimes 
to the agfona, as the companions in the most re- 
stricted sense. They wore, like the Greek heavy 
cavalry generally, a metallic helmet, a cuirass of 
linen or leather covered with metallic scales, and 
high boots; they rode without saddle, and carried 
a short (blade about two feet), straight, two-edged 
sword, and a lance (six to eight feet) of cornel-wood 
or ash, shod and tipped with metal, but no javelins 
and no shield. The Thessalian cavalry was similarly 
equipped. Besides these were the light-armed 
cavalrymen, the Pseonians and the sarissophors, the 
latter armed with the long lance (eighteen feet). 

The mass of the infantry, known as the pezetairoi, 
or infantry companions, constituted the phalanx, a 
solid defensive formation which Philip had created 
by modifications of the Theban phalanx. The men 
were armed with the eighteen-foot sarissa, or lance, 
which was held couched by the left hand grasping 
it about four feet from the foot, and supported by 
the right. The phalanx was drawn up in six bat- 
talions, or taxeis, generally eight men deep. When 
all the lances were levelled, and the men compactly 
massed, the lances of the rear rank reached nearly, 
if not quite, to the front rank, and the whole be- 
came a bristling mass of lance-points which no onset 
could penetrate. 

A body of light-armed foot-soldiers, called the 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 2 1 7 

liypaspists, originally developed out of the king's 
body-guard, formed the corps a" elite of the infantry. 
They were armed much like peltasts, with shield, 
long sword, and lance. A picked body of them, 
also known as the agema, served with the cavalry 
age'ma as body-guard to the King. Alexander's 
usual order of battle disposed the various troops as 
follows, beginning on the right: (1) bowmen and 
Agrianians ; (2) the cavalry age'ma, supported by the 
light cavalry of Paeonians and sarissophors ; (3) the 
cavalry companions; (4) the hypaspists ; (5) the/*s- 
etairoi, or phalanx; (6) the Thessalian and other 
allied cavalry. There was in reality no centre. The 
right wing was intended to smite, the left to stand 
firm. How Alexander used his line we shall soon see. 
A Persian army had already assembled to meet 
them, about seventy miles to the eastward of Zeleia. 
Without hesitation, the Macedonians advanced. 
The cities of Lampsacus and Priapus hastened to 
offer their submission as the army came toward 
them. The Persians, in their turn, advanced and 
took a position on the east bank of the Granicus, 
fifteen miles from its mouth at the Sea of Marmora. 
In doing this the Persians had overridden the wise 
advice of their only competent general, Memnon, 
the Rhodian Greek. He had advised that the 
army should slowly retreat, devastating the country 
through which Alexander had to pass, and thus em- 
barrassing him for lack of supplies. The Greeks, 
superior in their infantry and under the personal 
leading of their King, were certain for the present 
to have advantage in a direct engagement. Jealousy 



2i8 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

of Memnon and pretended solicitude for the dignity 
of the empire led the Persians to reject this advice 
and adopt the plan of defending the ford of the 
Granicus. 

They took their position above the steep eastern 
bank of the river, placing their cavalry in front along 
the bank, and the Greek mercenaries, who consti- 
tuted the mass of the infantry, qn the rising ground 
behind. The cavalry numbered about twenty thou- 
sand, the infantry somewhat less. The Persians, in 
setting their cavalry at the front to act on the 
defensive, committed a folly that Alexander appre- 
ciated the moment he arrived on the opposite bank, 
where he could see the enemy's line. He determ- 
ined, though the day was already far advanced, to 
attack immediately. 

Parmenion attempted to dissuade him from his 
purpose. He presented a strong case. It would 
be impossible to attack the enemy there except at 
great disadvantage. The stream was in places deep, 
and only at one ford could the troops pass through. 
Hence it would be impossible to meet the enemy 
with extended front. They would attack the column 
end as it emerged from the ford and attempted to 
climb the steep, muddy banks. A repulse at this 
juncture would put a damper upon the whole expe- 
dition. It was too much to risk. Rather let us 
encamp, he urged, and wait for the enemy to with- 
draw, as they are sure to do when they appreciate 
our superiority in infantry. The very prudence 
of this advice illustrates well how weak is logical 
analysis as against the sure, quick insight of genius. 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 219 

Alexander had seen at a glance the advantage he 
had through the mistake of his enemy. The Greek 
mercenaries, the only part of the army he had to 
fear, were removed to a distance from the river. 
The cavalry suited to the onset was assigned to a 
hopeless defence. Alexander's answer to Parmenion 
was not, however, couched in terms of strategy: " I 
should count it a disgrace, Parmenion, after having 
so easily crossed the Hellespont, to be foiled by this 
paltry stream. If I halt now, the Persians will take 
courage and flatter themselves they are in some way 
a match for Macedonians." With these words he 
closed the discussion, and sent Parmenion to com- 
mand the left or northerly wing, while he took 
command of the right. 

The glitter of his armour and the honours paid 
him by his attendants disclosed to the Persians, 
watching from the other bank, the position Alexan- 
der had taken, and they hastened to mass dense 
squadrons of horse upon their left wing, where his 
attack was to be expected. 

Amyntas, in command of a skirmishing force of 
cavalry, and accompanied by one division of in- 
fantry, in front of which moved a squadron of the 
companion cavalry, was sent on ahead to attack 
the enemy's extreme left. The purpose of this 
movement was evidently to draw the enemy's line 
toward the left and so weaken their centre or open 
a gap between centre and left where Alexander was 
preparing to strike. 

Then Alexander mounted his horse, called to his 
men to remember their valour, and gave the order 



220 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

to advance. The blare of the trumpets echoed his 
command. The paean to Mars resounded through 
the valley, and in they plunged. Alexander led the 
squadrons of heavy cavalry obliquely across and 
down the stream half left, in a sort of echelon form- 
ation, so that, on reaching the opposite bank, his 
line should present to the enemy as broad a front as 
possible. Showers of arrows fell upon them as they 
struggled through the ford. As the advance cavalry 
neared the shore, the Persians hurled their javelins 
down upon them from the high banks, or pushed 
down to meet them on the shore or at the very edge 
of the water. The Macedonians fought with spears, 
many of them still standing with unsteady footing in 
the water. The horses plunged and slipped as they 
gained the muddy shore, and the Persian horse rode 
down against them, pushing them back and rolling 
them over. 

The first-comers fared hard. A confused, surg- 
ing, pushing, slipping, struggling mass of men and 
horses covered the bank. But slowly and steadily, 
pressing their way through the ford and aiming at 
the enemy's centre, came the dense squadrons of 
Alexander's cavalry. The first rank gained the 
shore. Close behind and somewhat to the left 
came the second. They pushed their way relent- 
lessly into the jumbled mass. The long Macedon- 
ian spears with their stubborn shafts of cornel-wood 
prodded their way before them. The short javelins 
(three feet long) with which the Persians fought 
lacked the range of the Macedonian sarissas. 
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334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 221 

their way in, and the light-armed infantry mingled 
with the cavalry served a good purpose, too. 

Alexander, upon his horse, was in the thick of the 
fight. His lance was shattered. So was that of 
Aretis, his aide, to whom he had called for another. 
Then Demaratus, the Corinthian, gave him his 



" No sooner had he taken it than, seeing Mithridates, 
the son-in-law of Darius, riding up at the head of a 
squadron of cavalry arranged in the shape of a wedge, 
he rode forward and, striking the Persian full in the 
face, threw him to the ground. Thereupon Rhoisakes 
charged upon Alexander and smote him a blow on the 
head with his scimitar. A piece was broken from the 
helmet, but it held against the blow. Then, in turn, 
Alexander threw him to the ground, driving his lance 
through his breastplate into his chest. And, just then, 
as Spithridates had swung his scimitar aloft to bring it 
down upon the head of the King, Clitus, the very one 
whom Alexander six years later in his anger slew, antici- 
pating the blow, smote him through the shoulder, cutting 
off arm, scimitar, and all." 

The Persians maintained a vigorous resistance, 
but the heavy cavalry of the Macedonians kept 
coming in from the ford, striking blow after blow on 
the already disordered centre of the enemy. Once 
an entrance had been effected into their mass, the 
opening in their centre grew greater and greater. 
The retreat began first in the centre, where the first 
blow had been struck. Soon the retreat turned to 



* Arrian, Anabasis, i., 15. 



222 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

a rout, and the wings, finding the centre broken, 
joined in the retreat, and speed turned into furious 
haste. Little attempt to pursue them was made; 
hence the cavalry loss, considering the decisive de- 
feat, was relatively slight, not much exceeding a 
thousand, or about five per cent, of those en- 
gaged. 

As the field cleared itself from the rout, the Greek 
mercenaries were disclosed still holding sturdily 
their place on the highland beyond. Thus far they 
had had no part in the battle. It was as if they had 
not been consulted. The solid strength of the Per- 
sian force, and what perhaps might have been its 
rescue, had been stupidly relegated to uselessness, 
and now, abandoned utterly by their employers and 
lords, were left dazed by the sudden turn of affairs, 
and were at the mercy of the Macedonians. The 
cavalry swept down upon their flanks ; the phalanxes 
of infantry attacked them in front. They were sur- 
rounded, overwhelmed, annihilated. Two thousand 
were taken prisoners, but none escaped, except — to 
give it in Arrian's grim phrase — " such as hid them- 
selves among the dead bodies." 

The defeat was overwhelming. An important 
feature of it was the eminence of the Persians who 
fell. Among these were Arbupales, prince of the 
royal blood, grandson of Artaxerxes; Spithridates, 
satrap of Lydia ; Mithrobuzanes, governor of 
Cappadocia; Mithridates, son-in-law of Darius; 
Pharnaces, brother-in-law of Darius; and Omares, 
commander of the mercenary infantry. Arsites, 
the governor of Phrygia, committed suicide after 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 223 

the battle, because of his responsibility for the re- 
jection of Memnon's advice. 

The Macedonians had suffered a surprisingly small 
loss. Twenty-five of the hetairoi, or knights, the 
heavy cavalry that had carried the weight of the 
battle, and sixty of the other cavalry had lost their 
lives, making probably less than three per cent, of 
those actively engaged. The fact that the loss of 
the infantry in killed was only thirty shows how 
helpless had been the Greek mercenaries, against 
whom alone the heavy infantry had been engaged. 
They had evidently become a mere disorganised 
mob, and were simply massacred. 

The Macedonian dead were buried next day with 
distinguished honours, wearing their arms and 
decorations to their graves. Their parents and 
children were granted freedom from all property- 
taxes, as well as from imposts on the produce of 
their fields, and relieved from all obligation to per- 
sonal service. The court statuary, Lysippus of 
Sicyon, was ordered to make bronze statues of the 
twenty-five companions who fell, and these were 
afterwards set up in the Macedonian metropolis of 
Dion. 

Those who had been wounded received the per- 
sonal attention and solicitude of the King. He 
went from one to the other, looked at their wounds, 
inquired particularly as to how they had been re- 
ceived, and allowed them — what is dear to the 
soldier's heart, and especially to that of the Greek 
soldier — ' ' to tell their tales and brag of their deeds. ' ' 

Incidents like this betray in a striking way the 



224 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

extent to which Alexander's leadership and his em- 
pire were a personal thing. The prisoners taken in 
the battle were sent away in chains to till the soil of 
Macedonia. They were Greeks fighting against the 
Greek cause, upon which the Congress of Corinth 
had set its seal of legitimacy, and though this had 
been so far, even to an almost ludicrous extent, 
matter of theory rather than of practice, it was time 
now to vindicate the seriousness of the theory. 
Some of these captives were Athenians, and the 
desire of the Athenian state for their release ex- 
pressed itself in repeated official requests. An em- 
bassy sent to the King the next year at Gordium 
was refused. Not until three years after the battle, 
in 331 B.C., was the petition finally granted. 

The rich booty of the victory Alexander divided 
among his allies. To Olympias, his mother, he sent 
some of the Persian rugs and ornaments, and the 
golden goblets which he had found in the enemy's 
tents. Three hundred full suits of armour were sent 
to Athens to be hung up in the Acropolis as a votive 
offering to the goddess Athene, and the following 
inscription was to be displayed above them: "Al- 
exander, son of Philip, and the Greeks, excepting 
the Lacedaemonians [dedicate this spoil], from the 
barbarians dwelling in Asia." Where this offer- 
ing was placed in the Acropolis we are ignor- 
ant ; certainly not on the outside of the Parthenon, 
as was once supposed. The traces of letters on 
the eastern architrave, formerly believed to repre- 
sent the inscription dictated by Alexander, have 
been recently shown by an American student to 



334 B.C.] Carrying the War into Asia. 225 

belong to an inscription in honour of the Emperor 
Nero. 

Alexander's act, in sending the offering to Athens 
and the form in which the inscription was couched, 
speak for his generosity of temper, and his persistent 
kindly feeling toward Athens and admiration of her 
greatness. A smaller man might well have resented 
in the moment of brilliant success the indifference 
and the slights shown him in the time of his need, 
and Alexander might well have been excused from 
naming the Greeks as copartners in his victories. 

The question may be raised whether it was not a 
mere act of policy on his part, with a view to win- 
ning the cooperation of the Greeks, and especially 
of the Athenians. His need of a fleet might be 
mentioned in support of this view. A consideration 
of Alexander's character as a whole, however, and of 
his general course of action in achieving cooperation, 
does not admit of an interpretation of this act which 
would make it an ordinary politician's bid for an 
exchange of favours. 

His desire to be regarded and to be a real leader 
and champion of Hellenism had passed from the 
range of dream and fancy and theory into that of 
fixed purpose and a practical plan of life. He 
wished the sympathy and, in a large way, the co- 
operation of Greece, but he had no idea of purchas- 
ing or beguiling specific favours. The coldness and 
the aloofness which the Athenians displayed toward 
one who, in his embodiment of all that was most 
characteristic of the Hellenic spirit, in his passion 
for the beautiful, in his respect for Greek institu- 



226 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

tions, in his enthusiasm for the great things in Greek 
history and tradition, as well as in the brilliant charm 
of his person, might seem the very fulfilment of the 
Greek desire and the satisfaction of the national de- 
mand, can be explained only on the basis of a blind- 
ing political envy and a love of small things and 
narrow issues. Any fear that Athens might right- 
eously have entertained for the security of her local 
institutions and the maintenance of her autonomy 
ought, after the experience of the preceding four 
years, in which both Philip and Alexander had re- 
peatedly declined to avail themselves of good excuses 
for interfering in local matters, to be now entirely 
annulled. The world was moving. A new order 
was coming in. Athens saw, but she did not com- 
prehend. So the world's history moved on thereafter 
without Athens. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

IN LYDIA AND CARIA. 

334 B.C. 

TO say that Alexander had now the absolute 
confidence of the army would be too little; 
men trusted him, loved him, adored him. 
And no wonder. Men of any time would. He 
emerged from the battle-dust of Granicus a person- 
ality in which all was combined that inspires men's 
enthusiasm and commands their allegiance. In his 
twenty-second year, the flush and vigour of splendid 
youth upon him, no one called him a stripling; he 
wore the crown of success that genius, and not luck, 
had won him, and that age might envy. His char- 
acter was as frank and open as the sky ; indirection 
of every sort he abhorred. He could plan, organise, 
think; to will and to do he was quick and strong; 
in business affairs he was definite and orderly: but 
he had a heart, was loyal to friends, loved much, 
and was much beloved. Generous to a fault, and 
unconscious of self, meanness and fear were un- 
known to him. His respect for woman and his 

227 



228 Alexander the Great. 334 B.C.] 

moral cleanliness made him an exception to his 
times. Practical-minded as he was, he was swayed 
by ideals. He loved music and song, and the con- 
versation and association of men ; knew the charm 
of letters, and gave to the gods their due. What- 
ever his failings, these were his virtues. 

Of the physical man Alexander, biographers and 
artists have left us a reasonably distinct picture. 
Lysippus portrayed him in bronze, the painter 
Apelles in colour, the engraver Pyrgoteles on gems ; 
but the portraits made by Lysippus, men said, were 
the most lifelike. Through copies and imitators the 
portrait type passed on to the after-world, and sur- 
vives to-day in a few such works as the Alexander 
bust of the Louvre, the Alexander Rondanini of the 
Munich Glyptothek, the Alexander in the Pompeiian 
mosaic representing the battle of Issus, but best 
of all, perhaps, upon the tetradrachm coinage of 
Lysimachus. 

Alexander was of good stature and muscular, well- 
proportioned figure. He had the blond type of the 
old Northman Aryans, blue eyes and golden hair, 
which survived latest in Greece with the old aristo- 
cratic families. His skin, as Plutarch particularly 
emphasises, was clear and white, with ruddy hue on 
cheek and breast. A characteristic feature were the 
massy locks that rose up mane-like from above the 
centre of his forehead, and coupled with deep-set 
eyes and heavy brows, gave his face the leonine 
look to which Plutarch refers. The upward glance 
of the eyes, which had the soft, melting, or, as the 
Greeks called it, " moist" expression, that artists 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 229 

gave to the eyes of Venus and Bacchus, the strong, 
finely shaped, almost aquiline nose joined high to 
the forehead, the sensitive, passionate lips, the 
prominent chin — these complete the picture that 
pen and chisel have left. That he was beautiful to 
look upon all accounts agree. 

All the portraits represent him as smooth-shaven, 
except the Pompeiian mosaic, where a light growth 
on the cheeks perhaps serves to indicate youth, in 
accordance with Roman-Alexandrian usage. It is 
noticeable that the Capitoline bust commonly named 
Helios, but which at least has the Alexander type 
as a basis, and shows also an incipient beard, is a 
work of the second century B.C. But, after all, the 
Pompeiian mosaic may be a faithful copy of Helena's 
painting made directly after the Issus battle (333 
B.C.), and so be a proof that Alexander began the 
practice of shaving later than that, and at some time 
during the Asiatic campaigns. We know that the 
fashion of shaving the face clean took its rise in 
Greco-Roman civilisation from imitation of Alexan- 
der. The Hellenistic kings always appear without 
beards, and in the third century B.C. barbers and 
shaving made their way into Rome. The Roman 
emperors down to Hadrian followed the style thus 
set by their archetype. Alexander had a habit, too, 
of carrying the head slightly inclined toward the left 
shoulder, and this, they say, all his generals and suc- 
cessors, consciously or unconsciously, imitated, and 
many would-be heroes after them. 

The battle at the Granicus (May, 334 B.C.), in- 
significant as it seemed to be on the score of the 



230 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

relatively small Persian force (from thirty-five to 
forty thousand) engaged, had now become a fact of 
great significance. It was one of the three great 
battles fought by Alexander in open field for the 
conquest of the Persian Empire. As its immediate 
result, the whole of Asia Minor north of the Taurus 
range — that is, north of Pisidia and Cilicia — was 
placed at the mercy of Alexander. No large Persian 
force and no competent Persian authority existed 
within that territory. 

After appointing Calas, a young Macedonian who 
had commanded the Thessalian cavalry in the battle, 
governor of Phrygia, and sending Parmenion with 
troops to occupy Dascylium its capital, eighty miles 
to the east of the battle-field, he himself advanced 
into Lydia, toward its capital, Sardis. This city, 
from its central inland position, was an important 
point, as well as from its wealth, the strength of its 
citadel, and its command of the trade routes. Nine 
miles outside the city gates the Persian command- 
ant, Mithrines, accompanied by the leading citizens, 
came to meet the conqueror and offer the surrender 
of the city. 

On entering its gates, Alexander assured the citi- 
zens of their freedom, restored to them their ancient 
constitution and laws, which Persian occupation had 
set aside, and, as an honour to the city, announced 
his determination to erect a temple of the Olympian 
Zeus upon its citadel. In this connection an incident 
is related characteristic of the ancient meteorology. 
While Alexander was debating concerning the prop- 
er location of the temple there suddenly appeared in 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 231 

the sky — an unusual thing in the dry, placid climate 
of June — a heavy mass of clouds attended by thun- 
der and lightning. There came, however, with the 
clouds only a few drops of rain, but what fell, fell 
upon that part of the citadel rock where in ancient 
times the palace of the kings of Lydia had stood. 
This was accepted as an intimation of the divine 
will, and the temple was located on that spot. 

The government of the province of Lydia was not 
left in the hands of a single man, as under the Per- 
sian regime, but the former functions of the satrap 
were distributed among three different officials — one 
who attended to the collection of tribute and im- 
posts, one who commanded the garrison, and one 
who conducted the government and had the title 
and honours of governor. All three were made 
directly responsible to the throne. This model 
Alexander followed in organising the government 
of other provinces as they fell into his hands. It 
was an important modification of the Persian system 
in the interest of solidifying and centralising the 
imperial authority. The wisest thing about it all 
was that the organisation of the army was thereby 
kept undivided. 

Having so disposed of matters in Lydia, Alexan- 
der set out toward Ephesus, sixty-five miles to the 
southwest of Sardis, and so came again within the 
confines of Hellendom ; for the true Hellas, as 
the habitat of the Greeks, was then, as it is to-day, 
not a tract of land, but the ^Egean and its fringe of 
shores. The Asiatic Greeks were a third of all there 
were. In the most central position on the Asiatic 



232 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

shore, directly opposite Athens, stood Ephesus, at 
the head of a bay along the shores of which, within 
a radius of thirty miles, were ranged at least ten 
prosperous Greek cities. Chios flanked the northern 
entrance to the bay, Samos, twenty miles away, the 
southern. Accessible to the inland by the Cayster 
valley, Ephesus formed the natural meeting-place 
for the Carian, Phrygian, and Lydian population of 
the interior with the Greeks and others who plied the 
sea. Long before there were any Greeks in these 
lands it had been a busy mart, and now, like the cult 
and the sanctuary of its famous Diana, herself a 
Hellenised Asiatic, it had become the most cosmo= 
politan of all the communities wearing the Greek 
guise, and, with its population of a quarter of a 
million, was the largest, wealthiest city of Asiatic 
Greece, Miletus being its only rival. 

The Asiatic Greece of which Ephesus was the 
foremost representative inclined in general to the 
oligarchic form of city government and to a placid 
acceptance'of the mild Persian sway. The young 
hero who bore the lofty title of captain-general of 
the Greeks surely found some disappointments to 
face. The cities of European Greece looked on with 
indifference as he toiled, and awaited the opportunity 
of some reverse openly to oppose him. The Asiatic 
Greeks he came to rescue did not wish to be rescued. 
The war for the present was Greek against Greek. 

On the fourth day from Sardis Alexander was at 
the gates of Ephesus. The news of his approach 
had developed a panic within the city. Indeed, 
since the battle of Granicus the city had been in 




HEAD OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

FROM A TETRADRACHM OF LYSIMACHU3. 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 233 

continuous political turmoil. The Greek mercenaries 
who constituted, evidently in Persian interest, the 
garrison of the city, on the first news of the battle, 
in which the summary treatment accorded the Greek 
mercenaries must have particularly interested them, 
had seized two triremes and set off in flight. This 
was a serious blow to the oligarchic government 
which at that time, under Syrphax's leadership, was 
in control of the city. This government had sought 
to sustain itself by admitting into the city, after the 
battle of Granicus, the fugitive remnants of Mem- 
non's army, an act which had been sorely resented 
by the popular party. The oligarchy was thus 
identified more closely than ever with the fortunes 
of Persia, and the retreat of the garrison, and Mem- 
non's withdrawal to Halicarnassus, made it difficult 
for Syrphax and his associates to hold in check the 
rising tide of democratic revolt. 

These internal conflicts apparently made all 
thought of resistance to Alexander impossible, for 
on his approach Ephesus was thrown open to receive 
him. He immediately identified himself with the 
democracy, recalled the political exiles, broke up 
the oligarchy and established a government of the 
demos, and directed that the tribute heretofore paid 
to Persia should be transferred to the goddess Diana. 
The moment the populace was relieved of its fear of 
the " first families" through Alexander's recognition 
of the demos, riot broke loose. The mob undertook 
to pay off a long list of old scores. The men who 
had let Memnon into the city, and those who had 
pillaged the temple of Diana, and thrown down a 



234 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

statue of Philip standing within it, and others who 
had desecrated the grave of Heropythus, a former 
leader of the democracy — all these must now receive 
summary attention. First on the list came Syrphax, 
whom, together with his sons and his brother's sons, 
the mob had already dragged from the altars of the 
temple and stoned to death, when Alexander, to his 
great credit, interfered and reestablished order by 
military force. 

Magnesia and Tralles, cities in the Maeander val- 
ley, twenty and forty miles to the south-east, now 
sent deputations to announce their submission. 
The coast cities to the north in Ionia and ^Eolis, by 
overthrowing the oligarchies, testified their sym- 
pathy with the cause of Alexander. It is probable 
that Alcimachus, who was at this time sent out 
with a detachment of troops among the northern 
cities, aided in bringing these results to pass. The 
city of Smyrna, which since the days of the Lydian 
monarchy had lain in ruin or existed only in scattered 
hamlets, the King now ordered to be rebuilt. The 
Greek cities of the neighbourhood, such as Teos and 
Clazomenae, seem to have welcomed the Macedon- 
ians. 

The first opposition came at Miletus, the next im- 
portant maritime city to the south of Ephesus. The 
commander of the Persian garrison, Hegesistratus, 
had at first written a letter to Alexander offering to 
surrender the city, but later, learning that the Per- 
sian fleet was in the neighbourhood, he took courage 
and determined to make a defence. The fleet, how- 
ever, through its dilatoriness, disappointed his hopes. 



334 B.C.] In Ly dia and C aria. 235 

Three days before it appeared, the Macedonian fleet 
of 160 triremes had sailed into the harbour of Mile- 
tus, and anchored off the island Lade, which com- 
manded to the west the principal portion of the 
harbour, and which Alexander immediately pro- 
ceeded to occupy with a strong detachment of his 
army. 

The trireme of those times was preeminently a 
great ramming- or bumping-machine. Naval tactics 
were principally addressed toward disabling the op- 
posing ship by shattering its oars and dashing in its 
sides. The development of speed was therefore a 
chief consideration, and, as sails could not be de- 
pended upon and steam-power was unknown, oars 
and man-power were the only recourse. Of the 200 
men who constituted the normal complement of an 
Athenian trireme, 170 were oarsmen, and only from 
ten to fifteen armed fighting men. The oarsmen 
were arranged in three tiers or banks, in such wise, 
for economy of space, that the corresponding oars- 
men of the next lower bank sat a little lower and a 
little behind. The vessel itself was long, narrow, 
and of light draft. The normal length appears to 
have been from 120 to 150 feet, the breadth from 
15 to 18 feet, and that the draft could not have been 
much over three feet appears from the fact that 
cavalrymen have been known to participate in a sea- 
fight by riding out into the water among the ships. 
Xenophon, in the Hellenica, refers to such an occur- 
rence off the beach at Abydus. In long voyages the 
trireme could avail itself of a favouring wind by 
hoisting sails on its two masts, but these masts were 



236 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

lowered in clearing the ship for action. It appears 
that a speed of seven or eight miles an hour could 
be attained by the oars alone. The serious burden 
entailed by the maintenance of a fleet is apparent 
when it is seen that the 300 triremes regularly con- 
stituting the Athenian fleet demanded the service 
of 60,000 men, and the expenditure for rations and 
pay, to say nothing of the ships themselves and their 
outfit, from $250,000 to $350,000 per month. Im- 
perial ambitions came too dear for most states. For 
a little state like Attica, with a population of per- 
haps a third of a million, at least half of whom were 
slaves, it would have been impossible without the 
tribute from its dependencies. 

The Persian fleet, four hundred strong, shortly 
appeared and anchored at the opposite side of the 
bay, off the promontory of Mycale, six or seven 
miles away. Parmenion was desirous of risking a 
battle. They had everything to win and nothing to 
lose, he said; for the Persians, as it was, had the 
supremacy at sea. Alexander was of different 
mind. The loss of a naval battle would annul 
the prestige they had achieved by their victo- 
ries on land, and would encourage the anti- 
Macedonian elements in the Greek cities to attempt 
revolt. The chances in a sea-fight, furthermore, 
were all against them. They were greatly outnum- 
bered, and the Phoenicians and Cyprians were 
skilled watermen, while the Macedonians were 
relatively novices. He therefore wisely decided to 
keep his fleet on the defensive, and trust, as he had 
in the past, to his army for his conquests. The fact 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 237 

that the Macedonian fleet already held the harbour 
constituted in itself a great advantage, for as long 
as it kept within the close harbour the Persians 
could bring aid to the city only by attacking the 
Macedonians at a great disadvantage, and where 
their superiority of numbers would not count. 

The readiness with which omens could be inter- 
preted so as to harmonise with one's wishes and 
views is rather fitly illustrated by a competitive ex- 
ercise in augury in which Alexander and Parmenion 
indulged on this occasion. An eagle had been sit- 
ting on the shore behind the Macedonian ships. 
Parmenion found in this a convincing indication of 
the gods that victory was with the ships. Alexan- 
der pointed to the fact that the eagle perched on 
the land, not on the ships, giving thereby the evid- 
ent intimation that it was only through the victory 
of the troops on land that the fleet could have value. 
Alexander being the commander-in-chief, this was 
evidently the orthodox interpretation. 

On his first arrival before the city, Alexander 
occupied the portion lying outside the walls, and 
established a close blockade of the inner city. Just 
as the decision had been reached to continue the 
siege without risking a naval encounter, there came 
to Alexander from the city one of its leading citizens, 
Glaucippus, bringing the proposal that he should 
raise the siege on condition that the Milesians 
should thereafter make their harbours and their 
walls free alike to him and to the Persians. Gener- 
ous as Alexander was by nature, such good-lord, 
good-devil attitudes as this were always abhorrent 



238 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

to him. Peculiarly exasperating was this notably 
academic proposition in that it implied the possi- 
bility of a Greek community assuming in this life- 
and-death struggle between Greek and barbarian a 
neutral position. He therefore informed the emin- 
ent citizen that he had not come thither to accept 
what men chose to grant him, but to accomplish his 
own will, and bade him get back into the city with 
all speed, and warn his people to expect an attack 
at daybreak. They had broken their word with 
him, and might count on punishment. 

The use of siege-engines and artillery, which 
took its rise in Greek lands with Dionysius the 
Elder of Syracuse (in power 405-367 B.C.), before 
whom sieges had been mere blockades, was taken 
up by Philip of Macedon in his siege of Perinthus 
(340 B.C.) and Byzantium (339 B.C.), and rapidly 
extended during the wars of Alexander, especially 
in connection with the siege of Halicarnassus, Tyre, 
and Gaza, coming to its fullest development at the 
end of the century under Demetrius, who received 
therefrom his surname Poliorcetes, " the Besieger." 
Among the engineers who accompanied Alexander 
as experts were Diades and Charias, said to have 
been pupils of the Thessalian Polyeides, who assisted 
Philip at Perinthus. Others were Posidonius and 
Crates. 

The most important types of siege-engines were 
already in use in Alexander's time — the battering- 
ram, the siege-tower, the borer, the movable shed 
for protecting the besiegers, known as the chelone, 
or tortoise, and also the various devices for under- 











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FACE OF ALEXANDER. 

FROM THE POMPEIAN MOSAIC REPRESENTING THE BATTLE OF ISSUS. 

(From Koepp^s " Ueber das Bildnes Alexanders des Grossen") 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 239 

mining the walls. The battering-ram was an enor- 
mous beam, or composite of beams, provided with 
a ponderous metallic head or knob, which was either 
hung in a vertical frame and swung against the wall, 
or mounted on wheels and rolled against it. The 
dimensions of one of these ancient mechanisms, 
which has been described for us in detail, were as 
follows: length of the beam, one hundred and 
eighty feet ; diameter of each of the eight wheels on 
which it was mounted, six and a half feet ; thickness 
of wheels, three feet ; weight of the whole, over two 
thousand hundredweight. A hundred men were 
needed to operate it. While this was undoubtedly 
more massive than the ordinary ram (commonly 
from sixty to one hundred feet long), it is evident 
that an effective mechanism for opening a breach in 
a stone wall from ten to eighteen feet thick required 
solidity and weight. 

The borer was an engine not unlike the ram, but 
with pointed head and mounted on rollers. 

The siege-tower was a mighty structure, mounted 
on wheels or rollers, which could be advanced before 
the city walls and afford opportunity for the be- 
siegers distributed through its various stories to face 
the defenders of the wall on equal or higher level, 
and to reach the battlements by bridges. These 
towers reached a height, according to necessity, of 
from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, and 
contained from ten to twenty stories. The monster 
tower which Demetrius built in the siege of Rhodes 
had a breadth on the ground of seventy-two feet. 
The outside of the towers was usually protected 



240 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C. 

against weapons and firebrands by a coating of hides 
or of sheet-iron. 

Various devices for undermining the walls were 
employed, the commonest being to approach by 
underground passages, excavate the foundations, 
and support the wall by beams which afterward 
could be burned away. 

Though the various forms of the catapult, or 
mechanism for hurling arrows, stones, and bullets, 
had not reached their full development in Alex- 
ander's time, it is certain that he made use of the 
mechanical bow, or bow-gun, and he was probably 
also acquainted with the method of developing pro- 
jectile power from the recoil of twisted ropes. Great 
arrows from four to six feet long, ponderous mis- 
siles, and fire-balls were in this way thrown to con- 
siderable distances, cases of from four to six hundred 
yards being cited. 

The next morning after the visit of the embassy 
the assault upon the walls began. The battering- 
rams were set in action, and soon a great breach ap- 
peared, and a large portion of the wall tottered to 
its fall. As soon as Nicanor, the Macedonian ad- 
miral, saw the assault begun, he moved over from 
Lade, and sailing into the harbour and hugging the 
shore, moored his vessels close together in the nar- 
rowest part of the channel, with their prows facing 
the sea. They thus interposed an absolute barrier 
between the city and the Persian fleet. The naval 
superiority of the Persians was thus cancelled out of 
the situation, and Miletus became, so far as that 
factor was concerned, an inland town. 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 241 

Through the breach in the wall, the Macedonians 
pressed in. The citizens and mercenary garrison 
took to flight. Some swam out upon their wicker- 
framed leathern shields to an island off the city ; 
some in skiffs tried in vain to evade the Macedonian 
ships; but most of them were cut down within the 
city. Those who escaped death during the attack 
were given their life and freedom. The three hun- 
dred mercenaries who had taken refuge on the island 
were just about to be surrounded, and were prepar- 
ing to sell their lives as dearly as possible, when 
Alexander, shrinking from the useless butchery, 
offered them their lives if they would serve in his 
army, a condition which they readily accepted. 

There now appeared the first practical illustration 
of Alexander's plan of isolating the Persian fleet by 
robbing it of its harbours. The fleet lay yet off My- 
cale, but every day pushed out into the bay, hoping 
to tempt the Macedonians to an engagement. Their 
anchorage was inconvenient for the Persians, as they 
were obliged to go at least ten miles to the east, to 
the mouth of the Mseander, for their water-supply. 
To make their position still more uncomfortable, 
Alexander sent Philotas around the shore toward 
Mycale with a force of cavalry and three regiments 
of infantry. This made it impossible for the Persian 
sailors to land at all, and they found themselves cut 
off entirely from supplies of food and water, and as 
good as " besieged in their ships." They were 
therefore obliged to sail over to Samos, twenty-five 
or thirty miles away, and reprovision the fleet. 
Again they returned to Miletus and renewed their 



242 Alexander the Great. [334 b.c. 

former tactics, sailing up to the very entrance of the 
harbour, in hope of luring the Macedonians out. 

Finally five of their ships ventured into the har- 
bour between the island of Lade and the shore, 
thinking to surprise the Macedonian seamen, who 
were believed to be absent on shore collecting fuel 
and provisions. Many of them were absent, but 
enough were there quickly to man ten triremes and 
put out into the harbour. On seeing this, the re- 
connoitring squadron put about and fled; but a 
Carian ship from Iassus, being slower than the rest, 
was captured, men and all. This slight loss seems 
to have completed the discouragement of the Per- 
sians, and the whole fleet shortly sailed away. 

Alexander now decided to disband his fleet. His 
policy of conducting, handicapped as he was on the 
sea, exclusively a land campaign had been thus far 
brilliantly vindicated. As he moved to the south 
along the coast, his fleet, had it followed him, would 
have gone farther and farther from its base and 
entered waters where the Phoenicians were at home. 
The summer was now coming to its close, and the 
fleet would soon at best be obliged to seek winter 
quarters. The cost of maintenance was also a seri- 
ous item for his slender exchequer. One hundred 
and sixty triremes implied a force of over thirty 
thousand men to man them, and this matched or 
nearly matched the numbers of his army, without 
giving hope of accomplishing any results at all com- 
parable with those of which the army had demon- 
strated itself capable. The money required for the 
pay of the men, reckoning this at two or three obols 



I 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Caria. 243 

per day and double pay for officers, must have 
amounted to from sixty to ninety thousand dollars 
per month, and, if provisions could not be obtained 
without purchase, to as much more. 

Alexander's conquests had not as yet effected any 
vast increase of his permanent revenues. The cities 
of Asia Minor had not been subjected to extraordi- 
nary tribute; many had been freed altogether. His 
decision was made, therefore, on the basis of reasons 
that can be appreciated. However, the decision 
was probably a mistake, — for it soon proved itself 
necessary to reorganise a fleet, — yet not a fatal mis- 
take. It was an undue application of logic. But 
the most weirdly solemn thing about it all was, — and 
it must have been humiliating to the enthusiasms of 
the young leader who fought in the name of the 
Greeks, — that the Greek states offered no aid with 
their fleets, but left him to confess his helplessness 
on the seas. 

The autumn was now beginning, but there re- 
mained one more stronghold on the coast, Halicar- 
nassus, the old capital of the Carian kings, at the 
extreme south-eastern tip of Asia Minor. Here the 
forces of the opposition had assembled for a des- 
perate stand. The Greek Memnon, ablest leader 
among the Persians, had recently been appointed 
by the Shah commander-in-chief of all his forces in 
Asia Minor, both by sea and by land, as well as 
governor of the country, and he was now in com- 
mand within the city. With him were collected the 
relics of the Persian army. 

As Alexander advanced, the cities of Caria hast- 



244 Alexander the Great \ [334 B.C. 

ened to submit to him. Ada, the widow of Idrieus, 
a former king of Caria, who had been robbed of the 
throne, to which Carian law gave her the right, by 
her brother Pixodarus, came to meet him and offer 
her support. The present king, Othontopates, a 
Persian by birth, had within the preceding year suc- 
ceeded to the throne of his father-in-law, Pixodarus. 
The kings of Caria, as important and almost inde- 
pendent tributaries of the Persian Empire, had for 
the preceding half-century developed great power 
and wealth, and had made their chief city a mart 
and stronghold of prominence. Mausolus, who had 
died two decades before, and who had been suc- 
ceeded by his queen, Artemisia, had become at one 
time an important factor in Greek international 
politics, and was chief instigator of the Social War 
(357-355 B.C.), which more than anything else had 
wrecked the Athenian Empire. 

The city was fortified on three sides by massive 
walls protected by a moat forty-five feet wide and 
twenty-two feet deep. On the fourth side it faced 
the sea. It contained three strong fortresses or 
citadels : the acropolis, or citadel proper, the fortress 
Salmacis, at the south-west, directly on the sea, and 
the king's castle, on a small island at the entrance 
to the harbour. 

Alexander halted and encamped half a mile out- 
side the city, and prepared for a systematic siege. 
On the first day of the siege a sortie from the city 
was easily repulsed. A midnight _ attack upon 
Myndus, a town some miles west of the city, im- 
pulsively attempted by Alexander a few days later, 



334 B.C.] In Lydia and Carta. 245 

signally failed. Then he set about the siege of the 
city proper with vigour. He first filled up the moat, 
in order to furnish a foundation for the movable 
towers from which the walls and their defenders 
were to be attacked, as well as for the heavy ma- 
chinery used in battering the walls. Repeated 
sallies were made by the enemy, with the design of 
setting fire to the towers and engines, and after one 
of these there was found among their dead the body 
of Neoptolemus, the Lyncestian prince who, two 
years before, had fled from Macedonia on account 
of his supposed connection with the murder of King 
Philip. 

The siege was continued day after day with vary- 
ing fortunes, but gradually the force of the rams 
made itself felt. Two great towers and the wall 
between them had fallen ; a third tower was totter- 
ing. Behind the breach the Persians had hastily 
built a crescent-shaped wall of brick, joining the 
two broken ends together. The Macedonians ad- 
vanced their engines over the debris of the first wall, 
to make assault on the new inner wall. Alexander 
was superintending the work in person. 

Suddenly there was a movement from within. 
Masses of men came pouring out through the 
breach, and off at one side, where no one was ex- 
pecting it, by the gate called the Triple Gate, an- 
other rushing mass of soldiery appeared. Those 
who issued forth at the breach came stumbling on 
over the ruins, pelted by great stones and by jave- 
lins from the high wooden towers of the besiegers, at 
the base of which they now stood. The fight was 



246 Alexander the Great, [334 B.C.- 

hand to hand, in the midst of ruins and falling walls. 
Men were continually pushing their way out of the 
city, but the breach was too small for the struggling 
mass to pass. The first-comers were cut down. 
The sally turned to flight, but the breach was 
clogged with men, and those who were already out- 
side were caught as in a trap. Those who had 
issued out at the Triple Gate, met by a strong force 
under Ptolemy, were soon put to rout. The narrow- 
bridge over the moat proved too slight for their 
weight. Hundreds were piled into the moat, to be 
trampled to death or slain by the Macedonians with 
javelins and stones from above. In the panic the 
gates were shut to, and hundreds more were left at 
the mercy of the besiegers. 

The loss of the defenders had been terrible. One 
onset now through the breach, and the city would 
have been captured ; but out of the din of the last 
struggle issued the trumpet sound recalling the 
Macedonian troops and ending the battle. Alex- 
ander was still unwilling to give the city, a Greek 
city of noble traditions, over to the fate of capture. 
The regrets of Thebes were still upon him. He 
hoped yet that better counsels would prevail and 
that the city would offer its surrender. Within the 
city that night a council of war was held. The 
situation was seen to be hopeless. For Memnon 
the thought of capitulation was impossible. It was 
decided to withdraw to the fortress, set fire to the 
city, and leave it to its fate. In the second watch 
a temporary wooden tower by the wall was set on 
fire, also the storehouses and arsenals and the houses 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia. 251 

along the coast through a populous district, he re- 
ceived in turn the submission of Telmissus, Pinara, 
Xanthus, Patara, and about thirty other lesser cities. 
Then turning up the valley of Xanthus, toward the 
north, he entered, though it was now the depth of 
winter, the mountainous country called Milyas. 
Here he received deputations from most of the 
Lycian cities, offering submission, and found it 
sufficient, in the case of most, merely to send 
officers who should assume formal possession ; but 
Phaselis, a considerable city fifty miles to the east, 
the deputies of which presented him with a golden 
crown of honour, he visited, and made the oppor- 
tunity of the first rest he had taken since leaving 
Macedonia in the spring. Here he took occasion, 
after his own way, to pay respect to the memory of 
the rhetorician Theodectes, a son of the city, and 
pupil of his own teacher Aristotle. Plutarch nar- 
rates it in this wise : 

" While he was here, too, he saw a statue of Theo- 
dectes, recently deceased, standing in the town square, 
and one day after dinner, when merry with wine, he 
went out and danced about it, decking it with garlands 
in mass, thus honouring not ungracefully, in the form of 
sport, the pleasant association he had had with the man 
on the score of Aristotle and philosophy." 

It was also while here that he obtained word 
from Parmenion of a plot against his life undertaken 
by the" Lyncestian prince Alexander, the son of 
Aeropus. This young man, who had once been 
suspected of complicity with his two brothers, 



252 Alexander the Great. [334 B.c- 

Heromenes and Arrhabaeus, in the assassination of 
Philip, had at the time so effectually demonstrated 
his loyalty to Alexander that he had been entirely 
acquitted and afterward honoured with positions of 
responsibility. He had now, since Calas was made 
governor of Hellespontine Phrygia, been promoted 
to the command of the Thessalian cavalry, at pre- 
sent connected with Parmenion's army. The evid- 
ence of the plot was the following: Darius had 
received a communication from the young cavalry 
commander indicating a possible inclination to 
treachery. He thereupon sent one of his courtiers, 
Sisines, to communicate, if possible, with the young 
man, and offer him a prize of one thousand talents 
and the throne of Macedonia if he would make way 
with King Alexander. Sisines, and with him his 
secret, fell into Parmenion's hands. A council, im- 
mediately called, advised the King to have the young 
prince arrested at once. Loath as Alexander was 
to believe the treachery, the evidence was such, and 
the danger so great, that the decision was confirmed. 
So great was the peril regarded to be that the 
order was not even committed to writing. A trust- 
worthy officer, dressed as a peasant of the country, 
made his way incognito three hundred miles to Par- 
menion's camp, and conveyed the order by word of 
mouth. The prince was immediately seized and 
put under guard. Four years later we find him still 
a prisoner with the army in Afghanistan. Lack of 
proof of his guilt, or deference toward his father-in- 
law, Antipater, had spared him thus far; but the 
excitement attending the discovery of Philotas's 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Parnphylia, Pisidia. 253 

plot called his case again to attention, and a jury 
of officers before whom he was given a hearing, less 
merciful than the King, deemed his stammering 
defence a confession of guilt, and ran him through 
with their spears. 

After a long rest, interrupted only by an excursion 
to help break up a nest of Pisidian robbers in the 
mountains, who had been a perpetual thorn in the 
sides of the Phaselites, Alexander set out for Perge, 
in Parnphylia. The western boundary of this dis- 
trict is Mount Climax, which at the shore pushes 
itself out as a rugged headland into the very waters 
of the sea. Only at times when the strong north 
wind was blowing was it possible to make one's way 
around at its foot. Otherwise a steep path by a 
long circuit constituted the only means of commu- 
nication between the two districts. 

Alexander sent his army over the mountain, but 
determined himself, with his body-guard, to face 
the elements and force his way along the shore. It 
was winter-time, and the sea was rough, but he 
pushed his way through, sometimes up to his eyes in 
water, and always at great peril. The news of the 
successful passage set great stories afloat. The ac- 
count we have given is that of Strabo, and probably 
the correct one. Alexander's own report of it, as 
quoted by Plutarch from one of his letters, says no 
more than that he " made his way through." But 
other stories made him go through dry-shod. Plu- 
tarch says that many historians speak of it as if it 
were no less than a miracle that the sea should retire 
to afford him passage. Even the sober Arrian tells 



254 Alexander the Great. [334 B.c- 

that the wind changed from south to north, " not 
without divine interposition, as indeed both he and 
his men explained it. ' ' The rhetoric of Callisthenes, 
the would-be biographer of the King, takes fire over 
the incident, and reports how the sea bowed low 
and did him homage. Even Menander's allusion 
shows that the matter was sufficiently subject of 
common talk to be used as illustration in the 
comedy: " But see how Alexander-like is this: if I 
want anybody, lo ! there he stands, as if by magic ; 
if I need to pass through the sea at any place, lo ! 
presto change, it is open to my feet." The differ- 
ent forms of the story have, at any rate, their inter- 
est as betraying the beginnings of the Alexander 
romance. 

In Perge Alexander again joined his army. From 
this point he went only about forty miles farther to 
the east, far enough to reach and occupy Aspendus 
and Side, and then, as the winter was now coming 
to an end, returned to Perge, and started northward 
toward Phrygia. Syllium, a garrisoned fortress near 
Perge, he was obliged to leave undisturbed, as it 
showed no sign of yielding, and he was by the nature 
of his expedition not equipped for a siege. His way 
took him through the narrow mountain defiles of 
Pisidia, up on to the great central Phrygian plateau, 
which lies from thirty to thirty-five hundred feet 
above the sea-level. The Pisidians were a people 
of independence, fond of war, and much occupied 
with feuds among themselves. Alexander had no 
ambition, especially at this time, to accomplish in 
cjetail a conquest of all these petty tribes and towns, 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia. 255 

but all he wished for was passage through the coun- 
try. Even this the Pisidians seemed inclined to 
deny him. 

The first opposition was met with shortly after he 
had left the great amphitheatrical terraced plain 
nearly in the centre of which Perge stands. He 
chose the western exit from the plain, the highway 
leading to the modern Istanoz. Why this particular 
route was chosen does not appear, as a somewhat 
directer road to his goal, which was to pass behind 
Sagalassus, would have been found at the north- 
western exit. It is not unlikely that the western 
route offered a better road. Arrian says only, 
" His way led him past the city of Termessus." 

The Termessians now were a troublesome people. 
Arrian takes pains to say they were " barbarians," 
which means that they clung to the native language 
and customs and had not been assimilated into 
the Hellenism, or rather Hellenistism, of the plain. 
Their city was located near a pass which easily con- 
trolled the road. Count von Lanckoronski, in his 
Stddte Pamphy liens tmd Pisidiens, confirms Arrian's 
description of the city's unusually strong position, 
and says of it: " It holds the most unique and the 
grandest position of any city in Pisidia which we 
visited." Alexander stormed the pass, taking ad- 
vantage of a temporary withdrawal from a position 
of the full force guarding it, and encamped before 
the city. While here, a deputation came from 
Selge, a rival and hostile city well to the east, and 
claimed the friendship of the King on the score of 
their common enemy. A treaty made with these 



256 Alexander the Great. [334 B.c- 

people proved satisfactory then, and in later years 
as well, for they became faithful allies. 

Termessus was now left undisturbed, and the 
march continued over the mountain-ridge, and then 
up a long valley toward the mountain-slopes form- 
ing the southern frontier of Phrygia and commanded 
by Sagalassus, the modern Aghlasun. " This was 
also a large city, inhabited likewise by Pisidians; 
and warlike though all the Pisidians are, the men 
of this city are deemed the most warlike of all," says 
Arrian. After a sharp action in front of the city, 
the Sagalassans were driven in and the city was 
taken by storm. After capturing several mountain 
strongholds and accepting the capitulation of others, 
Alexander passed over the watershed into Phrygia, 
not crossing the high range (eight thousand feet) to 
the north, which way, if passable for an army, 
would have taken him directly to Baris (Isbarta), 
but turning to the west and entering the landlocked 
basin of Lake Askania. This lake (the modern 
Lake Buldur), twenty miles long and five wide, and 
situated three thousand feet above the sea-level, has 
bitter, brackish waters, but they scarcely yield, as 
Arrian asserts, salt by crystallisation. 

In point here are the observations of Professor 
Ramsay : * 

" That excellent traveller and observer, Hamilton 
(vol. i., p. 494), observes about Buldur Lake that it is 
impossible that this can be the Lake Askania mentioned 
by Arrian. His argument is that the lake is not ' so 



* Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, p. 299. 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Parnphylia, Pisidia. 257 

strongly impregnated with salt as to enable the inhabit- 
ants to collect it from the shores after the waters had 
dried up.' But I myself have seen the shores, as they 
dried up, covered with a whitish incrustation, and the 
inhabitants scraping it together into great heaps and 
carrying it off. I thought the substance was salt, and 
when I inquired I was told that it was saltpeter. Either 
Arrian's account is founded on the report of an eye- 
witness in Alexander's army, who had made the same 
mistake as I at first did, and did not inquire so minutely 
into the facts, or Arrian has erroneously applied to As- 
kania the description of the neighbouring Lake Anava, 
whose salt was used by the inhabitants." 

Passing around the eastern end of this lake, the 
army traversed thirty miles of level land, then with 
a rise of from eight hundred to one thousand feet 
passed over another mountain saddle, and arrived on 
the fifth day from Sagalassus near the large and 
prosperous city of Celsense, at the very sources of 
the Maeander River. Here, sixty-eight years before, 
the young Cyrus had reviewed his troops when just 
starting out upon his march toward Babylon. The 
citadel of Celaenae, built by Xerxes on his return 
from the unfortunate expedition into Greece, was 
now occupied by a force of one thousand Carians 
and one hundred Greek mercenaries, who had been 
left there in the lurch by the fleeing satrap Atizyes. 
Nothing short of a prolonged and systematic siege 
could have captured the citadel, and for this, in his 
anxiety, now that the spring (333 B.C.) was already 
opening, to meet his troops at their rendezvous in 
the north, Alexander had no mind. He therefore 



258 Alexander the Great. [334 b.c- 

was fain to avail himself of the businesslike proposi- 
tion of the garrison that if expected aid did not 
reach them within a certain time they would sur- 
render. Leaving fifteen hundred soldiers to fulfil 
his part of the contract, after a delay of ten days, 
he marched without further incident directly to 
Gordium, where he had directed Parmenion to meet 
him. Antigonus, who was destined in the later 
division of the empire to become king of all Asia 
Minor, he appointed governor of Phrygia, promot- 
ing Balacer, the son of Amyntas, to Antigonus's 
former position as commander of the Greek allies. 

Gordium (Gordeion), probably called in later times 
Eudoxias, was situated at the site of the modern 
Yurme. The importance of its location was determ- 
ined by its position on the Sangarius River, but 
more particularly by its position on the ancient 
road leading from Sardis to Susa, which, in its de- 
veloped character as a Persian " royal road," we 
have previously described. It was also readily ac- 
cessible from Byzantium. On arriving, Alexander 
found Parmenion awaiting him, and the men who 
had been allowed the winter's furlough in Mace- 
donia also joined him, bringing with them a freshly 
recruited force of 3000 Macedonian infantry, 300 
Macedonian horsemen, 200 Thessalian horsemen, 
and 150 Eleans. 

It was here, too, that the King cut the Gordian 
knot. The incident is not without its value as in- 
terpreting the character of the man and explaining 
his prestige. Soon after arriving, Alexander ex- 
pressed his desire to go up into the citadel, not only 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia. 259 

to visit the palace of Gordius and his son Midas, but 
also quite as much to see the waggon of Gordius 
and its famous yoke-cord, about which he had heard 
so much talk in the country round. And this is the 
story of the waggon, essentially as Arrian tells it : 

Among the ancient Phrygians there was a poor 
farmer named Gordius. He tilled a small plot of 
ground, and had two yoke of oxen. One of these 
he used in ploughing, the other to draw the wag- 
gon. Once, while he was ploughing, an eagle settled 
upon the yoke and stayed there till he unyoked the 
oxen. Seeking an interpretation of the omen, he 
drove in his waggon to the village of the Telmis- 
sians, all of whom, men and women alike, were 
gifted with the mantic power. Arriving there, a 
maiden he met at the fountain bade him go sacrifice 
to Zeus, in particular, upon the spot where the mys- 
tery occurred. This he did, and afterward married 
the maiden. A son, Midas, was born to them. 
Years after, the Phrygians, being in civil discord, 
consulted an oracle, and were told their trouble 
would end when a waggon should bring them a 
king. Just then Midas arrived, driving with his 
father and mother in the waggon, and stopped near 
the assembly. The people thereupon made Midas 
their king, and he, putting an end to their discord, 
dedicated his father's waggon, yoke and all, to 
Zeus, as a thank-offering for the sending of the 
eagle. Then the saying went forth concerning the 
waggon that whosoever should loosen the cord which, 
wound around the yoke-pin, bound the yoke to the 
pole, was destined to gain the empire of all Asia. 



260 Alexander the Great, [334 B.c- 

The cord was made of cornel-bark and was so tied 
that neither end could be seen. As Alexander, 
after looking at the knot, could find no way to open 

it, 

" and yet was loath to leave it unloosed, lest even this 
should start some disturbance among the masses, he, as 
some say, smote the knot with his sword and cut it 
asunder, and called that loosing it; but, as Aristobulus 
tells it, he drew out the pin of the pole, which was a peg 
driven right through the pole, serving to hold the knot 
together, and then drew the yoke off the pole. Exactly 
how Alexander managed it with this knot, I cannot with 
confidence affirm, but, at any rate, they left the waggon, 
both he and his associates, as if the oracle about the 
loosing of the knot had been fulfilled." 

While Alexander had been making his way north- 
ward from Pamphylia in the early spring, the Per- 
sians, under Memnon, had been preparing a new 
and vigorous movement. Their plan was reason- 
ably conceived, and contemplated nothing less than 
cutting Alexander entirely off from his connection 
with Europe and isolating him and his army in Asia 
Minor. A chief factor in this plan was the acknow- 
ledged predominance of the Persians on the sea. 
The Macedonian fleet, indeed, had been entirely 
disbanded. The crafty Memnon was well aware of 
the partisan divisions existing in the Greek cities, 
and also of the wide-spread, though now slumbering, 
aversion to the Macedonian hegemony throughout 
all Greece. If he could detach from Alexander the 
allegiance of some of the cities of the Asiatic coast, 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Parnphylia, Pisidia. 261 

particularly of the islands, which were more at his 
mercy, and then, in the glamour of success, appear 
off the Greek shores with his powerful fleet, he 
might, under the leadership of Sparta, which had 
persistently held aloof from all participation in 
Alexander's doings, call out the entire force of anti- 
Macedonianism to revolt. 

Leaving his post at Halicarnassus, Memnon ad- 
vanced first with his fleet and a considerable army 
of mercenaries to Chios, a hundred miles to the 
north. Here the leaders of the oligarchic party, 
playing the part of traitors, betrayed the city and 
the island into his hands. The government of the 
oligarchy was then restored. It is significant how, 
throughout all the Greek cities in Asia Minor and 
on its coast, the party lines between the oligarchic 
and the democratic tendencies had been made to 
conform to those dividing the Persian sympathisers 
from the Macedonian. The old party lines were 
the real and permanent facts. The new situation, 
which, one might have supposed, would, at least for 
a time, beget new interests and obscure the old 
lines, was merely utilised by the old, rooted partisan 
feeling to gain partisan success. The practical 
politician of all times is wedded to his party beyond 
the power of issues or principles to dislodge him. 

In the cities of European Greece the oligarchic 
factions or those with oligarchic tendencies had, in 
general, constituted the pro-Macedonian party, 
while the democratic party had been the chief means 
of resisting Philip's advance. That the exact oppos- 
ite came to be the case among the Greek cities of 



262 Alexander the Great. [334 B.C.- 

Asia was due to the circumstances there existing. 
The Persians had uniformly favoured the interests 
of the oligarchies. When a city came under their 
control, they generally placed its government in the 
hands of the few. When Alexander appeared in 
the country it was the democracy which hailed him 
as a deliverer, and hence it was the democratic 
leaders who became his partisans. Macedonian in- 
terests were therefore safer in the hands of the 
demos, and consequently this form of government 
was incidentally favoured by Alexander. His en- 
thusiasm for democracy was purely a matter of 
business interest, somewhat as certain trusts in the 
United States are Republican in one State and 
Democratic in another. 

From Chios Memnon proceeded to Lesbos, where 
all the cities except Mitylene surrendered to him. 
This, the leading city of the island, relying upon its 
Macedonian garrison, dared to refuse submission. 
A vigorous siege was begun. The city was com- 
pletely shut off from the land side by a double 
stockade extending from sea to sea, and invested 
by five military stations. On the side toward the 
sea the fleet maintained an absolute blockade, inter- 
cepting all the trading-vessels that sought to make 
the port. The city was thus reduced to severe 
straits. The news of Memnon's success spread 
rapidly through Greece. Embassies came from 
some of the Cyclades Islands, proposing alliance. 
The cities of Eubcea were in consternation because 
of a report that they were to be taken in hand next. 
Persian money had found its way again into Greece, 



833 B.C.] Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia. 263 

and there were many already who expected over- 
turnings in the cities. The Spartans were believed 
to be ready to welcome the Persians. 

Just at this crisis the Persian cause met with a 
serious disaster through the death of Memnon, 
which occurred during the siege of Mitylene. The 
operations were continued in Lesbos, after his 
death, by Pharnabazus, his nephew, to whom, in 
dying, he had committed the supreme command, 
pending the Shah's further orders. Pharnabazus 
was assisted by Autophradates, probably in the ca- 
pacity of admiral of the fleet. The siege of Mitylene 
was finally brought to a successful conclusion. It 
capitulated on the conditions that it should restore 
the banished to citizenship, destroy the slabs upon 
which its treaty with Alexander was recorded, and 
be confirmed in the status which it formerly pos- 
sessed as a dependent of the empire under the treaty 
of Antalcidas (387 B.C.). This latter condition the 
Persians, after gaining the city, disregarded, for 
they established Diogenes as tyrant, placed a gar- 
rison in the citadel, and laid the community under 
tribute. 

After accomplishing this, Pharnabazus, taking 
with him the Greek mercenaries, who had been of 
great service in effecting the reduction of Mitylene, 
sailed for the Lycian coast, probably with the pur- 
pose of recovering the districts which Alexander 
had traversed the preceding winter. Autophradates 
remained with the most of the fleet in the neigh- 
bouring islands. Meantime the Shah, having heard 
of Memnon's death, had found himself forced to 



264 Alexander the Great. [334 b.c- 

assume active measures in meeting Alexander's ag- 
gressions in Asia. Memnon's plan was evidently 
regarded as having died with its author. A mes- 
senger from the Shah met Pharnabazus in Lycia, 
announcing to him his appointment as Memnon's 
successor, and directing him to send his mercenaries 
to join the main army now being formed in Persia. 
This decision, robbing the western expedition of its 
support in land forces, ended once for all the pros- 
pect of any large success on the line originally 
planned by Memnon. Nevertheless, Pharnabazus, 
on his return to the fleet, proceeded as if the plan 
were intact. He sent Datames with ten ships to 
reconnoitre among the Cyclades, and himself, in 
company with Autophradates, sailed with a hundred 
ships to Tenedos, about thirty miles north of Lesbos, 
and forced it to yield on terms similar to those of 
Lesbos. Tenedos was only a dozen miles from the 
entrance to the Hellespont. The aim of the Per- 
sians was evidently directed at this. 

Even before matters reached this pass, Alexander 
had come to regret his impulsive action in disband- 
ing his fleet five months before. Memnon's activity 
had given him great solicitude, and while still at 
Gordium — for it was after leaving there that he 
heard of Memnon's death — he had commissioned 
Hegelochus and Amphoterus to go to the Helles- 
pont and collect a provisional fleet, even by pressing 
trading-vessels into service, if necessary, a proceed- 
ing which, as a breach of the treaty guaranteeing 
free passage of the Hellespont, called forth later 
a protest from Athens, and nearly occasioned a 



333 B.C.] Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia. 265 

rupture. Antipater, also, the regent in Macedonia, 
had received moneys from Alexander for a like pur- 
pose, and had sent Proteas to collect ships in Eubcea 
and the Peloponnesus to use as a protection for the 
Greek coast. 

This Proteas, hearing now of the ten Persian 
triremes under Datames as moored off Siphnus, set 
out by night from Chalcis with fifteen ships, in hope 
of surprising them. Arrian says he was " at the 
island of Cynthus at dawn." As it was a run of 
ninety miles, this implies a speed of at least eight 
miles an hour, not an impossibility with a favouring 
wind, such as Proteas would likely have taken ad- 
vantage of for a sudden descent. Spending the day 
there, in the following night he sailed over to 
Siphnus, thirty-five miles farther, and just before 
dawn fell upon the Persian ships, capturing eight of 
them. The Persian fleet continued to operate in 
the neighbourhood of Chios, ravaging the Ionian 
coast, but no further movement against Greece was 
made until autumn. 

When Alexander heard of Memnon's death, as 
he did shortly after leaving Gordium, all his solici- 
tude seems to have been at an end, and sharply 
turning his back on Europe and its affairs, he pushed 
out into his larger world. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FROM PHRYGIA TO CILICIA. 
333 B.C. 

IT was now the spring of 333 B.C. Alexander, in 
the middle of his twenty-third year, had been 
two and a half years on the throne. One fifth 
of the short period allotted him to reign was past. 
Of his first year as sovereign, the first half had been 
occupied in establishing title to his father's estate in 
Greece at the south, the second half in doing the 
same thing among the tribesmen at the north. His 
second year opened with the return to Greece and 
the destruction of Thebes (September, 335 B.C.). 
In March, 334 B.C., he set out into Asia. In May 
he had won the battle of the Granicus; in June had 
occupied Sardis, capital of the Lydian satrapy, and 
chief of the inland cities of Asia Minor; between 
July and November had swept down the coast and 
occupied the three chief cities of the Asiatic Greeks 
— Ephesus, Miletus, Halicarnassus ; in December 
and January he had traversed the turn of the coast 
by Lycia and Pamphylia, and cut a return swath 

266 



333 B.C.] From Pkiygia to Cilicia. 267 

back inland to Phrygia. In one year he had thus 
subjugated a tract of country about two hundred 
and fifty miles square, and added to his dominion 
an area about equal to that of New England and 
about double that of European Greece. 

The experience of the year had amply displayed 
the general indifference of the Greek states to his 
enterprise. So far from laying upon them any of 
the burdens of the war, he had left them free from 
tribute and all other forms of imperial taxation, and 
was thankful enough if they could be kept from 
open opposition. Every question which concerned 
them was regarded as sensitive and was handled 
with gloves. The shields captured at Granicus had 
been sent as a present to Athens, in the hope of in- 
fusing some warmth into the stony heart ; but there 
was no response, and when, nine months later, an 
Athenian embassy asked for the return of some 
Athenian captives taken among the mercenaries at 
Granicus, they found the King in wary mood, and 
were bidden to call again. The prisoners were as 
good as hostages, and the situation made the hold- 
ing of hostages convenient. Yet Alexander was 
ostensibly captain-general of the Greeks, and claimed 
to be fighting as their " liberator." At Miletus he 
had rejected Parmenion's advice to risk a sea-fight, 
lest in case of a defeat " the Greeks might take 
heart and start a revolution." Greece and Greek 
opinion still loomed up large in his horizon. A year 
later, as his new standing-ground broadened, they 
dwindled, and soon passed almost out of view. 

During the winter of 334-333 B.C. the movement 



268 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

of the Persian fleet under Memnon's command up 
into the ^Egean had given him great solicitude. 
Well it might. It menaced the Dardanelles. Once 
he was cut off from Europe, who could vouch for 
the loyalty of the Greeks ? Sparta was already wait- 
ing to join openly in cooperation with the Persian 
fleet. The death of Memnon (February, 333 B.C.) 
was, therefore, a severe blow to the Persian cause 
and a veritable deliverance for Alexander. It pro- 
duced a radical change in the plans of the Shah. 
Up to this time he had relied upon the Greek aver- 
sion to Macedonia, and the Persian and Greek con- 
trol of the sea, ultimately to foil and smother the 
military strength of Alexander. His plan had been 
that which Memnon represented in the council of 
generals before the battle of the Granicus, namely, 
to avoid a battle and by skilful retreat to draw the 
young adventurer across devastated countries until 
his strength was spent, but on the sea to take the 
aggressive. The plan was wise, but Memnon's* 
shrewd counsel had been overruled by the military 
arrogance of the Persian princes who accompanied 
him, and the colossal mistake of fighting at the 
Granicus had been committed. After that there 
was no hope for any plan on land, and Memnon's 
death palsied the plan by sea. 

So Persia herself was forced to intervene with her 
own armies led by the Shah ; and this gave the second 
year of Alexander's campaigns in Asia a new char- 
acter, and led up to the battle of Issus. This year 
and the results of this battle open a new phase in 
the young conqueror's career. Thus far he had 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia to Cilicia. 269 

been the son of Philip, inheritor and executor of his 
father's plans. He was a Macedonian leading 
Macedonians to war against Persia in the name of 
Greece. His ideals and ambitions were still in ac- 
cord with those of the simple country folk he led ; 
he belonged still to their little world. But after his 
eyes had once beheld the magnificence of Persia 
itself, as they saw it in the pomp and state of Da- 
rius's army and camp, a new world opened before 
him, infinitely grander and richer and wider than 
that in which he, plain son of poverty and simplicity, 
had been reared ; and behold, he had eaten of the 
fruit of the tree of knowledge. Then the ways be- 
gan to part between him and his Macedonians, be- 
tween the new Alexander and the old. It was 
merely the beginning: no one remarked it; it did 
not show itself in specific acts ; years elapsed before 
men really knew that they knew it. The change 
came on as slow as it was inevitable, but as we look 
over the whole life-story of the man, and mark the 
trend of motive that lay behind the outward form 
of act, we cannot fail to see the impulse to the new 
departure in the experiences of this second year in 
Asia. These experiences came, too, just at a time 
when Greece, by persisting in her indifference de- 
spite his achievements, and sinning thus against 
love, had, as it were, finally cast him adrift, and 
brought the ideals of his youth to their first disap- 
pointment. If Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta 
had gone with him in heart and hand, if Greece had 
adopted him as her own, surely history would have 
been written differently, and more of the real Hellas 



270 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

would have been embodied, whether for good or ill, 
in the empire which he left ; but, be that as it may, 
when we note in his later years an absence of all in- 
clination to return to Greece, and find him ready to 
adopt Oriental manners and become a half Oriental, 
we see why we need not wonder. The only wonder 
is that we find in his later attitude toward Greece 
and Greek things so little of that bitterness which 
comes to men whose motives have been miscon- 
strued and whose help has been disdained. 

When Darius, after hearing of Memnon's death, 
saw that nothing was now likely to prevent Alex- 
ander from attempting to push his conquests farther, 
even into the heart of the empire, and that a serious 
effort to resist him must now be made, he is said to 
have summoned a council of war and laid before it 
the question, Shall the Shah take command in per- 
son ? Most of his advisers urged him to raise a large 
army, and, leading it himself, to make short, quick 
work of annihilating the upstart invader. In earlier 
days the Shah had always been expected to lead the 
army in war, but now, with the establishment of 
peaceful, luxurious life, it had become the excep- 
tion. For the Shah to go indicated that a supreme 
issue was at stake. 

But there was present in the Persian council a 
Greek, of better military judgment than all the 
courtiers, and who knew whereof he affirmed. It 
was the crafty old Charidemus of Eubcean Oreus, 
the most experienced professional soldier of his day. 
For thirty years or more he had been continually 
in evidence in Greek affairs, as pirate, freebooter, 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia to Cilicia. 271 

mercenary soldier, and general, or diplomatic agent. 
He had been in the service now of the Persian 
satraps, now of Thracian princes, now of Athens, 
for a time perhaps of Philip himself; often he had 
been in business on his own account, but in his later 
years he had been mostly with Athens, and had 
done no small mischief to Philip's cause. It was 
through him that the first news of Philip's death 
had been sent to Demosthenes, and either from sus- 
picion that this indicated complicity in the deed, or 
on account of some of the man's many military sins, 
Alexander could never forget or forgive him ; and 
when, in 335 B.C., he forgave Athens and withdrew 
the black-list of politicians he had at first assigned 
to punishment, he made exception alone of Chari- 
demus. So the old man had taken refuge in Persia, 
and was serving now as military expert and general 
adviser at the court of Susa. 

When now the question came to him what had 
best be done, he gave advice that differed radically 
from that of all the rest. The Shah, he said, ought 
not to stake his empire on a single throw. This he 
would do, however, if he took command in person. 
An army of one hundred thousand, one third Greek 
mercenaries, under the leadership of a competent 
general, was large enough. It was not wise to give 
the Macedonians battle at the first; better retreat 
slowly before them until they became ensnared in 
the vastness of the country. 

The King at first inclined to accept the advice, 
but his courtiers stoutly opposed. They suspected 
Charidemus of desiring the command for himself, 



2J2 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

and perhaps they were right. They went so far as 
to accuse him of treacherous designs, and savagely 
resented his insinuation that the Persians were not 
a match for the Macedonians. Charidemus lost his 
temper, and proceeded to express without further 
use of diplomatic language his high estimate of the 
Persian cowardice. Therewith his doom was sealed. 
The Shah " seized him by his girdle," and he was 
led forth to death. As he left the royal presence, 
he exclaimed: " The King will rue this, and that 
soon. My revenge is at hand. It is the overthrow 
of the empire." The action of the Shah was fol- 
lowed by quick but still too tardy regret. 

Such is the story of Charidemus as Diodorus and 
Curtius Rufus tell it, and though Arrian knows no- 
thing of it, there is no reason on that account to re- 
ject it. The official Macedonian sources from which 
Arrian draws his materials seem to belittle the dan- 
ger that menaced Alexander, not only in Memnon's 
plans, but in all that the Greek opposition, passive 
or active, involved. 

Darius sought in vain for the man competent to 
fill Memnon's place. He finally decided to take 
command himself and follow the advice of his coun- 
sellors. A mighty army was forthwith assembled at 
Babylon, and without delay the march into Upper 
Syria began. Hope ran high. The proudest em- 
pire of the earth marshalled its strength in all the 
pomp and circumstance of ancient warfare. Sixty 
thousand native soldiers, the Cardaces, formed the 
nucleus of the host ; one hundred thousand horse- 
men were there, the pride of Asia; four hundred 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia to Cilicia. 273 

thousand foot-soldiers, Persians, Medians, Armen- 
ians, Babylonians, and hardy soldiers from the far 
North-east, made up the mass. Princes and chiefs, 
vizirs and satraps, men great in fame and high in 
station, were the leaders. It was as if the nation 
itself, not its army, were gathered together in grand 
review ; and all had its centre in the person of the 
Shah himself. His court, with all its state — queen, 
daughters, harem, hordes of attendants — forms, 
luxury, paraphernalia, and pomp, attended him, as if 
to remind that it was the empire itself, and not a mere 
machine of war, that went forth to meet the invader. 
Babylon itself, from the gates of which they 
issued forth, was a standing witness to the stability 
and might of the empire. It was the grand old 
wicked Babylon. For twenty centuries it had been 
the great mart and imperial city of the river-plain. 
For three centuries the great structures with which 
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar had endowed it 
had made it the talk and wonder of the world. Its 
walls of brick, seventy-five feet high and thirty-two 
feet broad, — so broad that two four-horse chariots 
could pass each other in the roadway that followed 
the top, — inclosed an area ten miles square. Almost 
diagonally across the square plan of the city flowed 
the Euphrates. Xenophon reports its width as two 
stades (nearly a quarter of a mile), though at present 
it is scarcely five hundred feet. Canals diverged 
from it in various directions, to serve, in addition 
to the broad thoroughfares, as highways through the 
city. In the north-western quarter of the city, on 

both banks of the river, were the royal palaces and 

18 



274 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

the citadels. On the east bank were two vast 
palaces, each built on a half-artificial elevation, and 
made to serve as a citadel, one the work of Nabopo- 
lassar, the other of Nebuchadnezzar. Hard by the 
former and to the south rose the mighty pile of 
E-sag-il, the temple of Belus, a lofty, tower-like 
structure lifted irf eight gigantic terraces from a 
foundation six hundred feet square. Across the 
river was the great royal park, in the midst of 
which stood another tall mass of palace structures, 
within which, ten years later, Alexander was to find 
his death. Adjoining at the north and close by the 
river were the famous " hanging gardens," lifted on 
piers of brick and rising in terraces to a height of 
seventy-five feet. The whole area within the walls 
was not, at least in Alexander's time, closely built 
and populated. Curtius Rufus somewhere found 
the statement, which he reports to us, that part of 
the land in the outskirts was farmed, and that the 
compact city had a diameter of eighty stades, not 
the whole ninety (ten miles) of the walled inclosure. 
The great mounds of ruins that to-day cover the 
plain for five or six miles to the north and to the 
south of Hillah testify to the essential correctness 
of the singularly accordant statements which ancient 
writers have left us concerning the city's extent, and 
yield at the same time a sad comment on the hopes 
and confidence of nations that, like those of Baby- 
lon, stay themselves in bricks and bigness. 

When, sometime in midsummer, 333 B.C., the 
news of Darius's advance reached Alexander, he was 
still in northern Asia Minor. He had chosen Gor- 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia toX^ilicia. 275 

dium as his spring rendezvous, in part because of its 
situation in relation to the great roads leading into 
Mesopotamia. At Ancyra, sixty miles farther east, 
the two great routes diverged, the one, the northern 
route by the " royal road," leading through southern 
Armenia, the other leading through Cilicia. Until 
Alexander received news of the Shah's advance, and 
an indication of his route, he remained in the north, 
keeping Ancyra as his base of action. From this 
point he subjugated the western part of Cappadocia, 
and received there the embassy from the Paphla- 
gonians to the north, offering their submission and 
begging him not to invade their land. When finally 
word came — probably in the form of information 
concerning the appointed rendezvous of mercenaries 
employed for the Persian fleet — that Darius was be- 
lieved to be advancing into Syria, Alexander took 
the southern route, leading between Lake Tatta 
and the Halys direct toward Cilicia. He moved 
with tremendous rapidity, forcing the marches by 
day and by night. All forms of opposition melted 
away before him, and almost before the enemy 
knew he was in motion he swept down from the 
mountains into the city of Tarsus. He had passed 
without striking a blow the famous Gates of Cilicia 
— a pass so narrow that a camel must unload in 
order to get through, and which, from Cyrus's times 
to Ibrahim Pasha in this century, has been regarded 
as the key to the country, — and the Taurus range, 
the great outer wall of defence for Mesopotamia 
and Syria, was now behind him. 

A severe illness befell him at Tarsus. Aristobulus, 



276 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

one of his companions on the expedition, who after- 
ward wrote his biography, — a work now lost, except 
for the abundant citations, preserved especially in 
Arrian, — attributed the illness to the fatiguing toils 
of the march and of war. Other authorities to 
which Arrian had access attributed it to a bath taken 
while overheated in the cold waters of the Tarsan 
river Cydnus. Not improbably both authorities 
were right, the one reporting the cause, the other 
the occasion. The illness was characterised by high 
fever accompanied by convulsions and inability to 
sleep. All the physicians despaired of him except 
Philip the Acharnanian, who proposed to check the 
course of the disease by administering a purgative 
draught. While Philip, it is said, was preparing the 
medicine, a letter came to Alexander's hand from 
Parmenion, the first general, warning him of Philip, 
who, he claimed to have heard, had been bribed by 
Darius to poison him. Parmenion was a trusty old 
officer, a rock-ribbed Macedonian of the old-fash- 
ioned type, narrow-minded and suspicious, especially 
when it concerned his master's dealings with the 
Greeks. This incident, where his jealousy of non- 
Macedonians who found favour with the King first 
comes to light, has been recorded by the associates 
of Alexander, and was, as other references to Par- 
menion tend to show, probably intended to bear its 
part in explaining the later estrangement between 
the two. We cannot, however, believe that Par- 
menion invented the story. Such suspicions were 
common in those days, and Parmenion's temper 
made him easy prey. 

When Philip passed Alexander the cup containing 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia to Cilicia. 277 

the medicine, Alexander handed him the letter, and 
while Philip was reading it, drank the potion. This 
action expressed his desire to banish from his en- 
vironment that atmosphere of small personal sus- 
picion which haunts the presence of autocrats, and 
to replace it with a generous spirit of friendly con- 
fidence. How hard it was for him to carry the de- 
sire consistently into effect, the story of his stormy 
life will tell ; but behind all the mistakes of his im- 
pulsiveness and the constraints and temptations of 
his unnatural position there can always be seen as a 
permanent background of character, as the true Al- 
exander, a yearning for loyal, trustful friendship, 
and an ambition to be worthy of it. 

Cilicia, a strip of land about two hundred and 
fifty miles long and from thirty to seventy-five miles 
broad, shut in by the Taurus range on the north, 
the Amanus on the east, and the Imbarus on the 
west, is really the vestibule to Mesopotamia and the 
East. It is naturally divided into two portions, 
the mountainous, rough Cilicia (Isauria) to the 
west, and Cilicia of the plain to the east. The lat- 
ter contains much open land, the extreme southern 
part of which constitutes the famous Aleian plain, 
where legend, in deference to a folk-etymology 
which made the name mean " the plain of wander- 
ing," had placed the forlorn roamings of Bellerophon 
after he fell from Pegasus's back. It is watered by 
three rivers, the largest of which is the Pyramus. 
In summer its heat is excessive. 

After sending troops under Parmenion to occupy 
the passes of the Amanus Mountains on the east, 
Alexander made an excursion to the westward, 



278 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

occupying first the city of Anchialus, and later Solce, 
a city the people of which spoke a Greek so bad as 
to earn in our modern word " solecism " a lasting 
monument. The Greek element in these cities 
probably constituted only a small proportion either 
of the population or of the blood. A fine of two 
hundred talents of silver which Alexander imposed 
upon the citizens because of their Persian leanings 
was afterward in part remitted. 

News came here of the success of the Macedonian 
forces left in Caria and Lydia in an encounter with 
the Persian commander Othontopates, who still held 
the citadel of Halicarnassus. A thousand of his 
men had been taken prisoners, and seven hundred 
and fifty killed. In celebration of the victory, as 
well as in recognition of his own restoration to 
health, Alexander arranged a great fete, including 
athletic sports, a torch-race, a musical contest, a re- 
view of the troops, and offerings to the gods — a 
genuine Hellenic festival. When things went well 
with the Greeks, they knew no better way to 
signalise it — and perhaps no better way has yet 
been found — than to give the gods, as first citizens 
of the state, a banquet and invite themselves, 
and then provide for the gods an entertain- 
ment such as their own tastes pronounced the 
most delectable — contests of skill and strength 
and craft and art, in which man was pitted 
against man, and the best man won the crown. 
No scenic or festal display that did not stir the 
blood with the zest of competition was worthy of 
men and gods. 



333 B.C.] From Phrygia to Cilicia. 279 

After the games were over, seven days were occu- 
pied in a raid upon the mountain tribes in the neigh- 
bourhood. Then marching back by way of Tarsus, 
Alexander sent the cavalry through the Aleian plain, 
while he, accompanied by the infantry and the 
guards, moved along the coast by way of Magarsus 
to Mallus. Here he found Greek traditions, for the 
inhabitants claimed to have been originally a colony 
from Argos. As his family also made a great point 
of claiming an Argive root for their family tree, 
the opportunity of welding a friendship was not 
neglected, all the more in view of the sentimental 
nature of the claim. 

At Mallus he learned that the Persian army was 
camped only two days' march from the other side 
of the mountains. A council of war, immediately 
called, decided to advance directly to attack Darius 
where he was. The next morning the march was 
begun, and the army proceeded along the coast to 
Issus. From here two routes led into Syria — one 
to the north by the so-called Amanic Gates (the 
modern Topra Kalessi), a pass two thousand feet 
above the sea-level, and another, apparently the 
more usual, though the longer, by way of the coast 
as far south as Myriandrus, and then through an 
opening in the mountains into Syria. Alexander 
chose the southern route, and, after passing the so- 
called Cilician Gates, advanced as far as Myriandrus. 
Just as he was about to cross the mountains, he was 
fortunately detained by a heavy autumn storm, for 
before he was again ready to move, important tid- 
ings came, which changed all his plans. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

BATTLE OF ISSUS. 
333 B.C. 

MEANWHILE Darius, who had chosen a plain 
in the neighbourhood of Sochoi as suitable 
for the operations of his army and so a 
favourable place for a meeting with Alexander, had 
become impatient at Alexander's delay. Already 
his courtiers began to suggest the welcome theory 
that Alexander was afraid to face the might of the 
great King. He probably was appalled at having 
heard that the great King was there in person. He 
surely would never dare to cross the mountains. It 
would be necessary for the Shah to go over and de- 
stroy him. The theory was speedily quickened into 
faith. Surely against so mighty an array as this the 
handful of Macedonians would have no chance or 
hope. Under the prancing feet of the vast squadrons 
of the world-famed Persian cavalry the little band 
would be trampled into destruction. Confidence ran 
high. 

All over the Greco-Persian world it was the same. 
280 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 281 

The word went out that the disturber of the world's 
peace was now safely locked up within the mount- 
ains of Cilicia, and that he would soon be buried 
beneath the Persian avalanche. Demosthenes at 
Athens only voiced the hope and the expectations 
of all enemies of Alexander when he read to his 
friends the letters he had just received from the 
East, and confidently predicted the speedy downfall 
of Alexander. It made the great orator, to be sure, 
easy prey in after days for the taunts of ^Eschines * : 

" But when Darius came on with all his force, and 
Alexander, as you [Demosthenes] claimed, was locked 
up in Cilicia and in sore straits, and was going to be, as 
your phrase had it, ' speedily trampled underfoot by the 
Persian horse,' then, with the city not big enough to 
hold your swagger, you pranced about with epistles 
dangling from your fingers, pointing people to my coun- 
tenance as that of a miserable, despairing wretch, and 
called me a bull ready for the sacrifice, with gilded 
horns and garlands on the head, the moment anything 
happened to Alexander." 

New courage, as the autumn months came on, 
had been inspired into the Persian fleet off Chios. 
A hundred of the best ships had been sent over to 
Siphnus. Here Agis, King of Sparta, came to 
parley with the leaders, asking for money to begin 
a war, and urging the Persians to send an army and a 
fleet to the Peloponnesus. All this was going on in 
Greece just at the time when Darius, in November, 
333 B.C., was halting before the mountains of Ama- 
nus and querying what had become of Alexander. 

* iEschines against Ctesiphon, sec. 164. 



282 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

There was at least one man in Darius's camp who 
did not lose his good judgment. This was Amyn- 
tas, a Macedonian noble, who, for some reason not 
known to history, had fled the court at Pella a few 
years before, and whom we hear of as being with 
the Persians at the battle of the Granicus, and after- 
wards as fleeing from Ephesus before the approach 
of Alexander's troops. He was now in command 
of the Greek mercenaries, and we shall hear of him 
again. He advised Darius most earnestly to remain 
where he now was, on the Assyrian side of the 
mountains. He need have no doubt that Alexan- 
der would come to him. The narrow defiles and 
uneven land of Cilicia offered no favourable oppor- 
tunity for the Persian army, with its cavalry and its 
great masses of troops, to utilise its strength. But, 
as Arrian has it, " the worse advice prevailed, for- 
sooth because it was for the moment the pleasanter 
to hear." 

Having sent all the unnecessary baggage, the 
treasure, and the harems of himself and his satraps 
to Damascus, 250 miles to the south, Darius crossed 
the mountains, and came to Issus on the same day 
that Alexander arrived at Myriandrus, scarcely 
thirty-five miles away. They had missed each 
other by less than a day, for Arrian says that Alex- 
ander arrived at Myriandrus on the second day from 
Mallus, and Issus was far beyond the half-way point. 
Plutarch even reports that the two armies passed 
each other in the darkness of the night, a statement 
which is, however, quite improbable. Darius's 
army, coming down through the hills at the north, 



333 B . c.] Battle of Issus. 283 

would not have been seen from Issus until within 
four or five miles of the town. The haphazard 
methods of obtaining information concerning the 
movements and position of the enemy, which made 
it possible for the Macedonians thus placidly to 
march out of the plain just as the enemy, from five 
to six hundred thousand strong, was entering it 
close behind them, offer a striking contrast to the 
methods of reconnoissance employed in modern 
warfare. That Alexander should have taken the 
risk of marching off to the south and leaving the 
way open for the Persian to come in at the north, 
without even seeking to inform himself concerning 
the possibility of such a movement, reflects, how- 
ever, no discredit on his strategic insight. There 
was nothing he presumably desired more than that 
Darius should enter Cilicia, and it was in hope of 
enticing him in that he had tarried so long. The 
narrow plains of Cilicia were his chosen field for 
battle, not the open land of Syria. A vast army, 
too, like that of Darius, would find slender chance 
of subsistence once it had crossed the mountains. 
Alexander's only mistake was in not rating high 
enough his opponents' folly. 

When Alexander heard that his enemy was close 
by him and in his rear, he could scarcely believe the 
news to be true ; so he embarked some of his guard 
in a thirty-oared boat and sent them back along the 
coast to reconnoitre. Without going the whole dis- 
tance to Issus, the reconnoitring party was able to de- 
scry the camp of the Persians. Alexander then called 
together his chief officers, and, aware that a supreme 



284 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

moment in his affairs was at hand, reviewed the 
whole situation with them, summing up the grounds 
of confidence that a victory was now in their hands : 
They were to meet a foe whom they had met before 
and vanquished. They were themselves used to 
toil and danger; their enemy were men enervated 
by luxury and ease. They were freemen; their 
enemy were slaves. There was, finally, evidence 
that God was on their side, for he had put it into 
Darius's mind to move his forces to a place where 
his vast multitude would be useless, whereas the 
Macedonian phalanx had room enough to display 
its full power. The rewards of victory, too, were 
great. The whole power of Persia was drawn up 
against them, led by the Shah in person. In the 
event of victory nothing was left for them to do but 
to take possession of all Asia and make an end of 
their toils. He reminded them of their many brill- 
iant achievements in the past, both as an army and 
as individuals, and recounted their deeds, mention- 
ing them by name. With due modesty, too, he told 
of his own deeds, and ended by telling the story of 
Xenophon and his famous ten thousand, who, with- 
out Thessalian or Macedonian horsemen, without 
archers or slingers, had put to rout the king and all 
his forces close before the walls of Babylon itself. 
The word was that of a Greek to Greeks. The en- 
thusiasm of battle laid hold on them all. They 
thronged about him, clasped his hand, begged him 
to lead them forthwith against the foe. His army 
was consolidated on one thought and ambition, and 
that was the thought and ambition of its leader. 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 285 

Alexander then ordered his soldiers to take din- 
ner, for evening was now approaching, and sent a 
few horsemen and archers back to occupy the Cilic- 
ian Gates, the narrow passage eight miles north of 
Myriandrus, between the sea and the hills, through 
which he had passed only a few hours before, and 
which he would be obliged to repass in returning to 
the plain. After nightfall he led his whole army to 
the pass, and encamped there at the southern limit 
of the plain of Issus. 

The Persians, on entering Issus, had found some 
wounded Macedonian soldiers in the lazaretto, and 
forthwith massacred them. The prevailing opinion 
was at first that Alexander was avoiding battle and 
was now caught in a trap, shut off from retreat. 
The Persian host stood full in the way between him 
and Greece; behind the only escape was the enemy's 
land. Darius evidently thought at first that his 
enemy had passed over into Syria, for we learn from 
Polybius (xii., 17), who cites the authority of Callis- 
thenes, that when Darius, after his arrival in Issus, 
l had learned from the natives that Alexander had 
gone on as if advancing into Syria, he followed 
him, and on approaching the pass encamped by the 
river Pinarus. ' ' This would account for the position 
of the Persians nine miles beyond and to the south 
of Issus. Darius, however, soon saw, as Plutarch 
says, that he was in no position for a battle. The 
mountains and the sea hemmed in his army, and the 
river Pinarus divided it. He planned, therefore, to 
withdraw as soon as possible; but this Alexander 
sought to prevent, by forcing an immediate battle. 



286 Alexander the Great. [333 b.c. 

He saw at a glance his advantage. A field had 
by fortune been given him in which the tremend- 
ous preponderance of the Persian army counted for 
little. 

Early the following morning — it was about the 
beginning of November, 333 B.C. — Alexander led 
his army on toward the Persian position, twelve or 
thirteen miles distant from the pass where he had 
spent the night. The plain of Issus stretches along 
the shore of the sea, which bounds it on the west, 
for a little over twenty miles, gradually widening 
from the Cilician Gates, at its extreme south, to the 
neighbourhood of the city of Issus, which lies some 
five miles from the present coast-line in its northern 
extreme. The Persians had encamped on the north 
bank of the river Pinarus, which flows across the 
plain in a westerly or southwesterly direction, about 
nine miles south of the city. We have it on the 
authority of Callisthenes that the width of the plain 
at this point, reckoned from the foot-hills of the 
mountains to the sea, was, at the time of the battle, 
fourteen stades, i. e., somewhat over a mile and a 
half. Since then the alluvium of the mountain 
streams has carried the shore out until the plain is 
nearly five miles wide. A similar change has made 
the battle-field of Thermopylae unintelligible to the 
modern visitor. What was anciently a narrow path 
of fifty feet between sea and cliff is now a marshy 
plain two or three miles in width. The harbour of 
Miletus, in which the naval movements we have 
lately recounted took place, is now a plain in which 
the island of Lade is lost as a knoll. 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 287 

As long as the plain remained narrow, Alexander, 
as he marched forward, kept his troops in column ; 
but as it opened, he gradually developed his column 
into a line filling the whole space between the hills 
and the sea. Gradually the order of battle took 
shape. It was always his usage, so far as possible, 
to march upon the battle-field in the order to be 
there assumed. His caution in filling the width of 
the plain was due to his fear of being outflanked by 
the superior numbers of the enemy. Slowly the 
battle-line spread itself out. The infantry battalion 
swung up from the column to the front. The 
cavalry, which had held the rear, moved out to the 
wings. Upon the right, next the hills, were placed 
the Thessalian and Macedonian heavy cavalry, 
flanked by the lancers and Paeonians and the light- 
armed Agrianians and bowmen; next came the 
hypaspists, or light infantry, and their ag^ma y or 
picked squad; in the centre the phalanx; on the 
left were the allies, the Cretan bowmen and the 
Thracian troops of Sitalces. The left wing was 
placed, as usual, under the command of Parmenion, 
who was specially instructed to keep close to the 
shore in order to prevent any attempt to outflank 
him. 

Opposite was now visible the line of Darius's 
army. All told it is said to have contained from 
five to six hundred thousand fighting men. Against 
this the little Macedonian army of perhaps thirty 
thousand men, led by a stripling twenty-three years 
old, seemed hopelessly lost. They were shut off 
from their own world by the hordes of the Persians, 



288 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

locked into the narrow plain, with the only line of 
retreat, in case of defeat, leading into the enemy's 
country. Darius had thrown a body of thirty thou- 
sand cavalry and twenty thousand light-armed in- 
fantry across the river as a shield while his army was 
assuming battle order, but before the battle began 
they were slowly withdrawn to the wings. His 
centre was composed of the thirty thousand Greek 
mercenaries, his best fighting troops, which were 
thus offset against the Macedonian phalanx. At 
each side of these he set his best native troops, the 
Cardaces, as they were called. His left wing, 
stretching out along the hills, the line of which 
curved about to the south, overlapped the Greek 
right, and menaced its flank. His right wing was 
composed of the mass of the cavalry, for the ground 
along the shore offered the greater freedom for 
cavalry action. The great multitudes were arrayed 
line behind line to an unserviceable depth, the front 
being too narrow to give effectiveness to the mass 
of the army. 

After inspecting the arrangement of the enemy's 
line, and appreciating the superior strength which 
the enormous masses of superb cavalry gave to its 
right wing, Alexander gave orders to transfer the 
Thessalian cavalry from his right to the left wing. 
This change was quietly made, the squadrons mov- 
ing rapidly across behind the phalanx, and taking 
their position beside the Cretan bowmen and the 
Thracians. 

Before the battle opened, Alexander sent a body 
of light troops — Agrianians, bowmen, and some 







. , SOLE or MILES ( I )[:fil 3 \>#, 

Pillar of JonS^fc^ 5V'^ 




PLAIN OF ISSUS (PRESENT CONDITION). 

THE ANCIENT COURSE OF THE PINARUS FOLLOWED 
THE RIVER CHANNEL NEXT TO THE NORTH. 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 



cavalrymen — to dislodge the force which was men- 
acing his right on the foot-hills to the east. The 
movement succeeded, but as a permanent protection 
to this wing he detached two squadrons (three hun- 
dred men) from the companion cavalry, posting them 
far out upon the right. 

For a while the two armies faced each other in 
quiet. Darius planned to use the river bank as a 
defence. Where the bank was not abrupt, stock- 
ades had been placed to make it so. Alexander 
was glad of an opportunity to rest his troops, and 
was determined to advance very slowly and keep 
his line in perfect order. With mechanical precision 
every arrangement was effected and every movement 
made. There was no nervous bustle or disorder. 
When everything was ready, Alexander rode down 
the line, briefly exhorting his men, appealing to 
each regiment in terms of its own peculiar ambition 
and pride. To the Macedonians he named their 
battle-fields and victories; to the Greeks he spoke 
of another Darius their forefathers had met at Mara- 
thon. Tumultuous cheers greeted his words wher- 
ever he went. The fervour of battle was on. " Lead 
us on! Why do we wait ?" they cried; and the 
dogs of war tugged at the halter. Then with meas- 
ured step, in close array, the advance began. As 
soon as they came within range of the darts, how- 
ever, the double-quick was ordered. On ahead 
galloped the magnificent squadrons of the com- 
panion cavalry, twelve hundred strong, with Alex- 
ander at the head to open the attack, and drove 
itself, a compact body, into the Persian left. This 



290 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

yielded at once to the tremendous onset. No 
military force had ever yet proved able to check 
the dash of the Macedonian heavy cavalry. 

On the Macedonian left the Persian cavalry had 
the advantage. Vastly superior in numbers, and 
the flower of the Persian army, it found to oppose 
it the scanty squadrons of the Thessalian cavalry, 
supported by the infantry allies. The Persian line 
here crossed the river, and, with charge after charge 
in fearful struggle, slowly forced their opponents 
back. In the centre the phalanx had found rugged 
opposition. It was here Greek against Macedonian. 
The line of the phalanx had been broken in crossing 
the river, and Alexander's sudden advance with the 
heavy cavalry had left its right unprotected. High 
on the river bank before them the Greeks held their 
vantage-ground, driving their weapons down into 
them, pushing them back as they clambered up. 
Even the long sarissas failed to open a way. The 
tremendous mass of the Persian centre stood like a 
rock. The Macedonian phalanx was for once held 
in check. The battle threatened to go against them. 
But Alexander already held the key to success. The 
rout of the Persian left had brought him round upon 
the flank of the Greek mercenaries, who formed the 
centre. He tore in upon it, rending it asunder. 
The Shah, seated in his four-horse chariot in the 
centre of the host, became his goal. The story of 
the combat waged at this point is graphically told 
by Curtius Rufus, and as its chief details are con- 
firmed by Diodorus, it probably was drawn from 
Clitarchus (second century B.C.): 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 291 

" Alexander was doing the work of a soldier no less 
than that of a leader. For there stood Darius towering 
aloft in his chariot, a sight that prompted alike friends to 
shield him and foes to assail him. So then his brother 
Oxathres, when he saw Alexander rushing toward him, 
gathered the horsemen of his command and threw them 
in the very front of the chariot of the king. Conspicuous 
above all the rest, with his armour and his giant frame, 
peer of the best in valour and loyalty, fighting now the 
battle of his life, he laid low those who recklessly surged 
against him ; others he turned to flight. But the Mace- 
donians grouped about their King, heartened by one an- 
other's exhortations, burst in upon the line. Then came 
the desolation of ruin. Around the chariot of Darius 
you 'd see lying leaders of highest rank, perished in a 
glorious death, all prone upon their faces, just as they 
had fallen in their struggle, wounds all in the front. 
Among them you would find Atizyes and Rheomithres 
and Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, all generals of great 
armies; piled up around them a mass of footmen and 
horsemen of meaner fame. Of the Macedonians, too, 
many were slain, good men and true. Alexander him- 
self was wounded in the right thigh with a sword. And 
now the horses attached to Darius's car, pricked with 
spears and infuriated with pain, tossed the yoke on their 
necks, and threatened to throw the King from the car. 
Then he, in fear lest he should fall alive into the hands 
of the enemy, leaped out, and was set on the back of a 
horse which was kept close behind against this very need. 
All the insignia of the imperial office, with slight respect 
for form, were thrown aside, lest the sight of them beget 
a panic. The rest is scattered, and melts away in its 
terror. Wherever a way is open, there the fugitives of 
the army burst through. Their arms they throw away — 



292 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. 

the very arms which they a little while before had taken 
up to shield their lives. Such is fear, it shrinks even 
from the means of rescue." 

The battle was now soon over. The Persian 
cavalrymen on the right, seeing the centre in flight, 
left their success and joined the rout. The very 
mass of the Persians became their destruction. The 
horsemen jostled and threw one another. Thou- 
sands were trampled to death. Men ran against 
one another's naked swords. They stumbled in the 
descending darkness. Heaps of writhing bodies 
filled the ditches. Ptolemy tells how Alexander in 
his pursuit crossed a ravine on a dam of corpses. 

The night alone stopped the pursuit. Alexander, 
contrary to the usage of those before him, always 
pressed his success to the utmost. Only when he 
and his men could no longer find their way through 
the gathering darkness did they relent and turn back 
over the field of ruin they had made. A hundred 
thousand Persians had fallen. Three victims were 
counted for each one of Alexander's men engaged. 
The mountain-sides were full of scattered fugitives 
making their way over into Syria. Others fled into 
the mountains of Cilicia, to become there the prey 
of the mountain tribes. Eight thousand Greek mer- 
cenaries, under the lead of Amyntas, were the only 
ones to preserve a semblance of order in retreat. 
They crossed the mountains into Syria, and made 
for Tripolis, the port where they had landed when 
brought to the country. Here they found the ships 
in which they came still in the harbour, and seizing 
what they needed, and burning the rest, they sailed 



333 B.C.] Battle of Issus. 293 

away as soldiers of fortune to Cyprus, and thence to 
Egypt, where they made themselves a terror until 
overwhelmed and slain, leader and all, by the Egyp- 
tian troops. The Shah, pushing on with rapid changes 
of horses, did not stay his flight till he had passed 
the mountains and reached Sochoi, in the Syrian 
plain beyond. From his whole army only four 
thousand fugitives assembled here with him. They 
quickly moved on to Thapsacus, to put the Eu- 
phrates behind them. 

Upon the field was left all the equipment of the 
camp — the luxurious outfit of the court, four mill- 
ions of treasure, precious things in robing, fabrics, 
utensils, armour, such as these plain Macedonians 
had never seen before ; and the Shah in his hasty 
flight had left behind him not only his chariot and 
his bow, but, most pitiful of all, his mother, wife, 
daughters, and little son, all at the rude mercy of 
the victor. 

The Macedonian loss had been not over 450 killed 
— 150 from the cavalry, 300 from the infantry. No 
battle more decisive in its issue was ever fought. 
In its historical results it ranks among the world's 
few great battles. It shut Asia in behind the mount- 
ains, and prepared to make the Mediterranean a 
European sea. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

FROM CILICIA INTO SYRIA. 

333-33 2 B.C. 

DURING the four months which intervened 
between Alexander's hasty departure from 
Ancyra (July, 333 B.C.) and the battle of 
Issus (November), the old world of Greece and the 
iEgean, upon which he had so coolly turned his 
back, went on its way and even essayed to construct 
a play of its own, with Hamlet left out. As sum- 
mer passed into autumn and the consciousness 
quickened that the ambitious young Storenfried 
was now well out of sight and reach behind the 
Taurus, opposition took breath again and began to 
gather its strength and lay its schemes in hope of 
the final disaster that Darius' s overwhelming arma- 
ment might well be counted to have in store for the 
harebrained intruder. 

The ^Egean was still in control of the Persian 
fleet. Alexander had not ignored the fact or its 
significance. He knew well enough that the em- 
bers of the opposition slumbering behind the ashes 

294 






333-332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria, 295 

of temporary defeat waited only for encouragement 
to burst again into flame, and that some decided 
action or some striking success on the part of the 
fleet might furnish such encouragement ; but when, 
early in the spring, the news came to him at Gordium 
of Memnon's death, he recognised, with his quick 
power of summarising a situation, that no central 
personal force was left to give coherence to the 
elements opposed to him, and so he took his risk 
and turned eastward, determined to win what further 
recognition he was to receive at home by quick and 
decided success in the far outer world. 

The various movements of the Persian fleet which 
began in midsummer and were continued throughout 
the autumn we have referred to incidentally in the 
foregoing, but it is well to summarise them here, so 
far as the scattered references of the historians, 
made without much suggestion of chronology, per- 
mit it to be done. The siege of Mitylene in Lesbos, 
continued after Memnon's death (February, 333 
B.C.), resulted in the capture of the city, and Tene- 
dos, an island off the entrance to the Hellespont, 
soon after submitted to superior force. There was 
no land force cooperating with the Persians, and so 
their field of action was limited to the islands, ex- 
cept that here and there a descent upon some coast 
town served their purpose for foraging, plunder, and 
destruction. Nowhere, however, did they gain, or 
apparently seek to gain, a foothold on the mainland. 
An expedition of ten ships under Datames's com- 
mand, which during the summer had slipped across 
the sea and anchored by Siphnos, as if to test the 



296 Alexander the Great. [333 B.c- 

temper of the Greeks and give some chance encour- 
agement to the anti-Macedonian elements in the 
coast cities, or perhaps enter into dealings with the 
Spartans, who through it all had remained open op- 
ponents of the league with Macedon, had come to 
grief, and eight of the ships had been captured by 
a Macedonian squadron organised at Eubcea, to the 
north. Hegelochus was by this time getting to- 
gether a Macedonian fleet in the Hellespont, and 
when a portion of the Persian fleet ventured to ex- 
tend its operations in this direction it was driven 
back. The Macedonians could not afford to have 
the main route cut that led from Macedonia into 
Asia. In the early autumn Hegelochus and his fleet 
grew bolder, and venturing out of the Hellespont, 
recaptured Tenedos; but when, in their assurance, 
they assumed so much control of the waterway as to 
lay embargo on Athenian freighters that brought 
the precious cargoes of grain down from the Black 
Sea, they drew forth a storm of resentment from 
Athens that for the moment menaced outright war. 
It had been already voted to send a hundred ships to 
defend Athenian interests in the Hellespont, and a 
rupture that would have cost the Macedonian inter- 
ests sore and given the Persian fleet its perfect op- 
portunity was all but completed, when diplomacy 
and worldly wisdom prevailed, and Hegelochus re- 
leased the ships in question. How near at hand the 
materials for an explosion lay, this incident, coupled 
with minor indications afforded by stray allusions 
in anecdotes and speeches of the time, amply sug- 
gests. These were the days when ^schines and his 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 297 

partisans of Macedonian sympathisers were " jol- 
lied " about their long faces and their gloom as they 
strolled among the gossipers of barber-shops and 
market-place, and when men of the other persuasion 
felt fine and fit, and looked at one another with 
mysterious, knowing looks; for had they not got 
the straight tip from their leader, the grave and 
reverend Demosthenes, who always had " inside " 
news and knew it as it was, and now had letters to 
show, that told how Darius was on his way from 
Babylon with a force so mighty that Alexander's 
little band of marauders would be trampled out of 
sight under the horses' hoofs ? And the " water- 
drinker " himself had relaxed somewhat from his 
owl-like seriousness, and had taken on a buoyant, 
jaunty air, yes, even joined a bit in the jests of the 
market-place at ^Lschines's expense. 

In the midst of it all news came that a hundred 
ships of the Persians had crossed the sea and lay in 
the harbour of Siphnos, ninety miles to the south, 
ready to take advantage of the expected event. 
Agis, the wily old Spartan king, sailed over to them 
with a single trireme, and laid before them, like 
many a Spartan king before him, a plan for saving 
Greece, themselves, and sundry other things, by 
giving him much gold and many ships. No one 
may say in what the conference might have ended, 
for while it still was pending came hurrying across 
the seas the grim tidings from the field of Issus. 
Instantly the whole scene changed. Complicity 
with Persian interests lost all charm. The Athen- 
ians might well deem themselves fortunate that they 



298 Alexander the Great, [333 B.C.- 

had gone no further toward the brink of revolt. For 
the Persians it was only a question whether they 
could save what they now had, and Pharnabazus, 
taking with him fifteen hundred mercenaries, hast- 
ened back with ten ships to head off a possible re- 
volt at Chios. The rest of the fleet soon followed, 
distributing itself among various stations on the 
coast of Asia Minor, — Agis, of whom and of whose 
mischief-making we shall hear more later on, going 
with it, — then with the spring it began to melt away. 
The Cyprians and Phoenicians belonging in the fleet 
could not be retained after Alexander's advance 
down the Syrian coast once began directly to 
threaten their own homes. Thus step by step 
Alexander was winning the ^Egean by fighting his 
way on land around its coasts. 

On the night of the battle of Issus, Alexander, 
returning from the pursuit, found the luxurious 
camp of Darius awaiting him, and in the Shah's 
tent he dined and made ready to pass the night. 
The booty left behind was far less than it would 
have been, had not the march over the mountains 
caused the Persians to discard much of their para- 
phernalia. All the grandees except the Shah had 
sent their harems to Damascus, where also a vast 
mass of treasure had been collected, together with 
the heavy baggage. Still, there was left enough of 
the luxurious appointments of the camp to dazzle 
the eyes of Macedonians and Greeks, and three 
thousand talents of gold, found with the rest, was 
not the least acceptable surprise. 

Plutarch tells this story : 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 299 

" Here when Alexander beheld the basins and water- 
pots and bath-tubs and ointment-flasks, all of gold, won- 
drously wrought, and smelled the divine odours with 
which myrrh and spices filled the room, and from thence 
passed into a pavilion marvellous for its height and 
breadth and for the magnificence of its couches and 
tables and the feast that was spread, he turned to his 
companions, and said: ' Well, this, I take it, is royalty.' " 

Darius, too, in his haste, had left behind in his 
camp wife, mother, and children. The various 
stones of Alexander's treatment of them, as told in 
the different ancient accounts, are all of one tenor, 
different as they may be in detail. The considera- 
tion shown the women and the self-restraint ex- 
hibited by the young soldier were novel things in 
those days, but they were sure marks of a nobility 
which all contemporary opinion united in recognis- 
ing. The simplest account is that given by Arrian, 
as embodying the statements of his highest orthodox 
authorities, Ptolemy and Aristobulus: 

" Some of the biographers of Alexander say that on 
the very night when he returned from the pursuit, after 
entering Darius's tent, which had been apportioned to 
his use, he heard the wailing of women and other like 
noise not far from the tent. On inquiring who the wo- 
men were, and how they happened to be in a tent so near, 
he received the following answer: ' King, the mother and 
the wife and the children of Darius, since it was told 
them that thou hast the bow of Darius and the royal 
mantle, and that the shield of Darius has been brought 
back, are lamenting him as slain.' When Alexander 
heard this he sent Leonnatus, one of the companions, 



300 Alexander the Great. [333B.C.- 

with a message to them: ' Darius is living; in his flight 
he left in his chariot his arms and his mantle: this is all 
that Alexander has.' Leonnatus entered the tent and 
told them the message about Darius, and added that 
Alexander would allow them to retain the retinue be- 
coming their rank, and other forms of state, as well as 
the title of queens; for not out of personal enmity had 
he made the war against Darius, but he had conducted 
it in a regular manner for the empire of Asia. These 
are the statements of Ptolemy and Aristobulus." 

Plutarch gives essentially the same account, with 
his usual moralising embellishments, subsidiary to 
which the following is added : 

" Nevertheless, Darius's wife is said to have been far 
the most beautiful of all princesses, just as Darius him- 
self among men was the handsomest and tallest; and the 
two daughters were worthy of their parents. But Alex- 
ander, as it seems, esteeming it more kingly to govern 
himself than to conquer his enemies, neither touched 
these women, nor indeed had intercourse with any other 
woman before marriage, except with Barsine, Memnon's 
widow, who was taken prisoner at Damascus." 

Arrian adds with some hesitation another story, 
which with greater profusion of details is also told 
by Diodorus and is referred to by Curtius Rufus and 
Justinus. This represents Alexander as having 
visited the tent of the women on the following day, 
in company with Hephaestion, and given them per- 
sonal assurance of his protection. Diodorus goes so 
far as to give his professions the somewhat aggress- 
ive form of a promise to see the queen's daughters 
better married than if Darius had attended to it 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 301 

himself. Darius's little son, only six years old, he 
is said to have noticed ; he kissed him and gave him 
the time-honoured assurance that he was a fine boy. 
But Arrian's doubt about all this seems well 
founded. Plutarch quotes from a letter of Alex- 
ander to Parmenion, written later, in which he says 
that he had " not so much as seen or desired to see 
the wife of Darius, no, nor suffered anyone to speak 
of her beauty in his presence." Hansen's, and even 
more particularly Pridik's, careful examination * into 
the authenticity of these frequent citations from 
letters of Alexander has tended to give them en- 
hanced authority, and the fact that it is not until 
later in Alexander's career that Hephaestion appears 
as his intimate, serves to confirm Plutarch's quota- 
tion by throwing suspicion on the story of the visit 
to the tent. 

The day after the battle was devoted to burying 
the dead with full honours of war. The loss 
Diodorus gives as 450 killed; Curtius Rufus, 452 
killed and 504 wounded; Justinus, 280 killed. 
Arrian tells only that in the struggle between the 
Macedonian phalanx and the Greek mercenaries 
opposed to them in the Persian line 150 Mace- 
donians fell. This lends confirmation to the figures 
given by Diodorus. The number of wounded, 504, 
as it stands in the present text of Curtius, appears 
small, and a slight correction would enable us to 
read, as the editor Hedicke has done, " 4500." 
This figure is in itself more reasonable, but the next 

* R. Hansen, Philologus, xxxix., 295 ; E. Pridik, De Alexandri 
Magni epistolarum commercio (1893). 



302 Alexander the Great. [333 B.c- 

sentence of Curtius is discouraging: "At so small 
expense was a mighty victory won." Ancient 
statistics regarding the number wounded in battle 
are rarely given, and must, in the nature of the 
case, be incomplete and unreliable, as there was no 
regularly organised hospital service. The ratio of 
wounded to killed in modern battles General Dodge 
gives as about seven to one, and the ratio in ancient 
battles he believes to have been considerably higher, 
perhaps ten to one. Though this is, by reason of 
the weapons used, inherently probable, it must be 
confessed that the scanty data we have are inde- 
cisive. Thus, during the night sortie at Halicarnas- 
sus, the Macedonians lost 16 killed and 300 wounded ; 
in the siege of Sangala, 100 killed and 1200 wounded. 
In both cases, however, the conditions were probably 
abnormal. In the battle of Paraetacene, on the other 
hand, Eumenes lost, according to Diodorus, 540 
killed and 900 wounded, while Antigonus, who was 
defeated, lost nearly as many killed as wounded. 

In respect to the number killed, the loss of the 
defeated army was, in ancient battles, out of all 
proportion to the victors' loss, on account of the 
massacre which followed the unprotected retreat. 
At Granicus, Alexander lost 115 killed in an army 
of 35,000, while the Persian cavalry of 20,000 lost 
1000 men, and the division of Greek mercenaries, 
20,000 in number, was entirely scattered and de- 
stroyed. At Arbela, Alexander, from an army of 
from 45,000 to 50,000 men, lost from 300 to 500 
killed, while the loss of the Persians was so enormous 
as to leave room only for the wildest estimates. 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 303 

Curtius sets it at 40,000, Diodorus at 90,000, and 
Arrian reports a hearsay estimate of 300,000! Their 
army numbered, by concurrent testimony of Arrian 
and Diodorus, about 1,000,000. Of the 600,000 
Persians engaged at Issus 100,000 were slain, against 
450 of the 40,000 or 50,000 Macedonians. In the 
battle of Megalopolis, two years later (331 B.C.), the 
defeated Spartans and their allies lost 5300 of their 
22,000 men, while the victorious 40,000 Macedonians 
lost only 1000 (Curtius). A loss of one man in four, 
such as the Spartans there suffered, is a terrible 
ratio, but one to be expected among Spartans, if 
defeated. At Leuctra they lost from four battalions, 
numbering about 2400 men, 1000 killed, and of 700 
Spartiatae — i. e.> genuine Spartan citizens — 400 were 
killed. So at Lechaeum they lost 250 out of 600. 
While ancient battles, therefore, contrast a loss of 
from one to two and a half per cent, among the 
victors with one of, say, from ten to twenty-five per 
cent, among the conquered, modern battles with 
their completer organisation show a much closer 
relation of loss. Thus, for instance, at Gettysburg, 
the Union army numbered about 93,500 men, of 
whom about 89,000 actively participated in the 
fighting. The Confederate force was about 70,000. 
The former lost 3072 killed, 14,497 wounded, 5434 
missing ; the latter, 2592 killed, 12,709 wounded, 
5150 missing, making the proportion of killed for the 
Union forces three and five tenths per cent., for the 
Confederates three and seven tenths per cent. At 
Waterloo the French and the Allies each lost about 
five per cent, in killed. 



304 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C. - 

Among the dead, after the battle of Issus, was 
Ptolemy, son of Seleucus, commander of one of the 
infantry divisions. Alexander himself had been 
slightly wounded in the leg. He was, nevertheless, 
able, the day after the battle, to pay his visits of 
sympathy to the wounded, and of congratulation to 
the victorious camps of his troops. Gifts of money 
were distributed among those who had distinguished 
themselves in battle, the dead received heroes' 
burial, and as monuments to their sacrifice and 
memorials of victory altars were erected on the 
river-bank to Zeus, to Hercules, and to Athena. 

Without attempting to pursue Darius, Alexander 
adhered to his original plan of campaign and kept 
to the coast, for the ^Egean was still controlled by 
the Persian fleet. He sent Parmenion, however, 
with the Thessalian cavalry and other troops, around 
behind the mountains to occupy Damascus, two 
hundred and fifty miles to the south, and seize the 
royal treasure deposited there. His own march led 
him first to Marathus, on the coast opposite Cyprus. 
While Alexander was here, Darius sent ambassadors 
to him, asking for the return of his wife, his mother, 
and his children, and offering him his friendship and 
an alliance. He reminded him of the friendship 
which had existed between the two countries under 
Philip and Artaxerxes, and of the way in which that 
friendship had been gratuitously broken by Philip 
after Artaxerxes's death, and how now without any 
reason Alexander had entered his domain with an 
army and wrought much damage to his people, 
stating that his own appearance in the field against 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 305 

him had been merely in defence of his country and 
for the preservation of the empire of his fathers. 

Without making oral answer, Alexander sent the 
following letter, the authenticity of which there is 
no good ground for calling in question : 

" Your forefathers came into Macedonia and other 
parts of Greece, and did us harm, without any previous 
injury from us. Now I, having been appointed leader 
of the Greeks and having a mind to punish the Persians, 
have crossed over into Asia, after hostilities had been 
commenced by your people. For you and yours sent 
aid to the Perinthians [on the Sea of Marmora], who 
were dealing unjustly with my father, and Ochus sent an 
army into Thrace, which was under our sway. My father 
was killed by conspirators whom your people instigated, 
as you yourselves have boasted to everybody in your let- 
ters; and after you, Darius, had slain Arses with Bagoas's 
help, and wickedly and in defiance of all Persian law 
seized the throne, yes, and wronged your subjects, you 
go on to send unfriendly letters about me to the Greeks, 
urging them to make war upon me, and send money to 
the Spartans and to other Greeks as well, though none 
of them took it, except the Spartans. Then, as your 
agents had corrupted my friends, and were trying to dis- 
rupt the peace which I had secured for the Greeks, I 
took the field against you — you who had begun the hos- 
tilities. Now that I have conquered in battle, first your 
generals and satraps, then you and your army, and am 
by gift of the gods in possession of your country, I am 
giving protection to those of your men who escaped from 
the battle and have taken refuge with me, and they of 
their own accord stay with me and have joined my army. 
As, therefore, I am lord of all Asia, come to me; but if 



306 Alexander the Great. [333 b.c- 

you are afraid you may be harshly treated in case you 
come, send some of your friends to receive pledges of 
safety from me. Come to me, then, and ask for your 
mother and your wife and your children, and anything 
else you will. You shall have it. Nothing shall be de- 
nied you that is just. And for the future, whenever you 
send, send to me as the King of Asia, and do not address 
me as an equal; but if you have need of aught, speak to 
me as one who is lord of all your possessions. Other- 
wise I shall conduct myself toward you as an evil-doer. 
But if you dispute my right to the kingdom, stay and 
fight on for it; do not play the runaway, for I shall march 
against you, wherever you may be." 

While at Marathus he learned of the success of 
Parmenion's mission to Damascus. He had taken 
the city and overhauled the fugitive Persians under 
Kophen, who were carrying off the baggage and 
treasure of Darius. Curtius Rufus reports that 
there were captured 2600 talents in coined money, 
500 talents of silver, 30,000 men, 7000 beasts of 
burden, besides masses of valuables and fair women 
without number. Athenaeus quotes from a letter 
of Parmenion to Alexander on the occasion: " I 
found flute-girls of the king, three hundred twenty 
and nine; men who plait crowns, six and forty; 
cooks, two hundred seventy and seven ; boilers of 
pots, twenty and nine ; makers of cheese, thirteen ; 
mixers of drinks, seventeen ; strainers of wine, 
seventy; makers of perfumes, forty." This serves 
as an expression of the wonderment which filled the 
eyes of the victors. 

From Marathus the army proceeded to Byblus 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria, 307 

and Sidon, which gladly surrendered, in hatred of 
the Persian. Their hereditary kings, in accordance 
with Alexander's principle of local government for 
cities, were left in power. At Tyre a determined 
resistance was met. At first the city offered to sur- 
render, but when Alexander expressed his desire to 
enter the city in order that he might worship in the 
temple of Hercules (Melkart), whom he claimed as 
ancestor, the answer was returned that the city 
would obey any other command of Alexander, but 
would admit within its walls neither Macedonian nor 
Persian. It was the pride of the city, and one that 
its position had made it possible to assert, that it 
had never admitted foreign troops at its gates. 

Twice for long periods (701-697 B.C. and 671-662 
B.C.) the Assyrians had beset the city in vain, and a 
century later Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian had 
for thirteen years (585-573 B.C.) maintained a fruit- 
less siege. Securely placed on a rocky island a little 
over two miles in circuit and less than half a mile 
from the mainland, it had, from the earliest dawn 
of history down to the time when Greek energy in 
the seventh century B.C. asserted its right, controlled 
the trade of the Mediterranean. When in the twelfth 
and eleventh centuries B.C. the first Greek settlers 
came to the Asiatic coast and to Cyprus, it was with 
Phoenician traders who had been there at least three 
centuries before them that they came in competi- 
tion, and it was from them that they learned trade, 
seamanship, arts, and even the art of writing. Greek 
competition in the ^Egean drove them out into the 
wider field of the Mediterranean. Sicily, southern 







o8 Alexander the Great. [333 B.C.- 



Spain (Tarshish), and the northern coasts of Africa 
became their markets. Their roamings marked the 
wanderings of their national god Melkart (Hercules), 
and at Cadiz (Gades) were the " Pillars of Hercules." 
Utica, Leptis, and Carthage, in Africa, were their 
colonies. Throughout all the period of the Phoenic- 
ian bloom, from 1200 B.C. to 700 B.C., Tyre was 
the Phoenician metropolis. Sidon, though the older 
city, played the second role. All the commodities 
of the world tributary to the Mediterranean passed 
in those days through the hands of the Tyrian traders 
as distributing agents. 

Though writing in the days of Tyre's decline, the 
Hebrew prophet Ezekiel (586 B.C.), who, like the 
other Hebrew prophets, forgetting the old-time 
friendship between Solomon and Hiram, King of 
Tyre (969-936 B.C.), now looks upon Tyre, the 
world's Vanity Fair, with all the aversion that the 
man of the prairie can in this day spend on the 
bankers of Wall Street, tells in his curse the story 
of its greatness: 

4 ' O thou that dwellest at the entry of the sea, which 
art the merchant of the peoples unto many isles, thus 
saitk the Lord God: Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am per- 
fect in beauty. Thy borders are in the heart of the seas, 
thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have 
made all thy planks of fir-trees from Senir: they have 
taken cedars from Lebanon to make a mast for thee. 
Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; they 
have made thy benches of ivory inlaid in boxwood, from 
the isles of Kittim [Kition in Cyprus]. Of fine linen 
with broidered work from Egypt was thy §ail> that it 



332 B.C.] From Cilicia into Syria. 309 

might be to thee for an ensign; blue and purple from 
the isles of Elishah [coast of northern Africa] was thine 
awning. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad [Sidon 
and Aradus] were thy rowers: thy wise men, O Tyre, 
were in thee, they were thy pilots. . . . Tarshish 
[Spain] was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of 
all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they 
traded for thy wares. Javan, [Ionia, Greece], Tubal, 
and Meshech [modern Armenia], they were thy traffick- 
ers: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass 
for thy merchandise. . . . And in their wailing they 
shall take up a lamentation for thee, and lament over 
thee, saying, Who is there like Tyre, like her that is 
brought to silence in the midst of the sea ? " 

This twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, from 
which we cite, contains among all the records of the 
past the fullest and most accurate account of the 
trade and the trade relations of the famous city. It 
was written during Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Tyre, 
and while Ezekiel was a captive at Babylon. The 
doom which the prophet saw impending over the 
city was fulfilled, not through the hosts of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, but by the arms of Alexander, and more 
yet by the city which he built to be its rival and suc- 
cessor, Alexandria in Egypt. Though Nebuchad- 
nezzar's siege had not resulted in the capitulation of 
Tyre, a compromise had been made by which the 
city retained its entire autonomy while recognising 
the supremacy of Babylon. Thus the nominal rela- 
tion of vassal to the Babylonian Empire, continuing 
after that empire passed into the hands of the Per- 
sians, had made the fleets of Tyre and of the other 



310 Alexander the Great. [333-332 B.C. 

Phoenician coast cities a main dependence of the 
Persians in asserting their Mediterranean influence. 
The relation had been, on the other hand, of great 
advantage to the trade of Phoenicia, particularly of 
Tyre, which during recent years, and especially since 
the downfall of the Athenian maritime empire, had 
stood in trade as mediator between the great domain 
of Persia behind it and the open Mediterranean 
before it. 

Alexander's theory of his campaign came here to 
the test. To attempt the capture of Tyre seemed, 
in the light of historical experience, quixotic. To 
leave it behind untouched meant to leave the Persian 
fleet its best rendezvous and, in the Phoenician ships, 
its central strength. The capture of Tyre would 
disable the Persian fleet, throw Cyprus into Alex- 
ander's hands, and make the occupation of Egypt 
an easy sequel. The Mediterranean would then be 
Macedonian, and the hope of sedition represented in 
Greece by Sparta would lose its last support. Secure 
thus in the rear, the army could then turn with con- 
fidence to its final work, strike into the heart of the 
continent, and march toward Babylon. It was de- 
termined, therefore, cost what it might, to take this 
city by force. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE SIEGE OF TYRE. 
332 B.C. 

THE time was now January (332 B.C.). The 
siege lasted until August. Of the ten brief 
years which Alexander had allotted him for 
his conquests in Asia, more than half of one was 
thus devoted to the capture of a single city. If it 
had meant the city alone, it would not have been 
worth while, but the result proved the wisdom of his 
general plan, and brought the reward to his patience 
and thoroughness. 

The island upon which the city was built was 
separated from the mainland by a channel about 
twenty-five hundred feet wide, near the shore shal- 
low and swampy, but over by the city reaching a 
depth of eighteen feet. Being without ships, Alex- 
ander proceeded to build a dam, or mole, across the 
channel by driving piles and filling in with earth and 
stones. Diodorus claims to know that the mole was 
given a width of two hundred feet. It remains to 
this day, broadened out by the silt of the sea into 

311 



312 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

the isthmus that joins the little modern city of Tyr 
to the mainland. The story goes that the King 
himself carried and threw in the first basketful of 
earth; then amid shouts of enthusiasm the Mace- 
donians, men and officers, laid hand to the work. 
The abandoned houses of old Tyre, situated on the 
mainland opposite the island, provided a convenient 
quarry, and the hills of Lebanon, hard by, furnished 
timber for the piles and the siege machinery. At 
first the work went on well, until it came into deep 
water and closer under the walls of the city, and so 
within range of its artillery. 

The ships of the Tyrians, too, had now become a 
factor. Manned with archers and slingers, they 
swarmed about the head of the pier, driving the 
labourers from their work. Battle took the place 
of building. The work went slow. Barricades 
were built to shelter the workmen. Great towers, 
filled in all their stories with catapults and mechani- 
cal bows, and protected against missile and torch by 
thick layers of hide, were set to hold the ships at 
bay; but against these the fertile devices of the 
Tyrian seaman found resource. A monster scow, 
which had served as a transport for horses, was fitted 
out as a fire-ship. It was filled with dry twigs 
pruned from the vines and with fagots of pitch, and 
its bow, boarded up high, was loaded with bundles 
of straw and shavings and fagots mingled with 
masses of brimstone and pitch. Two derrick-like 
masts mounted on the bow carried long yards upon 
which hung caldrons filled with oil and molten pitch. 
Then loading the stern heavily down with ballast so 



332 B .c.] The Siege of Tyre. 3 1 3 

as to throw the bow high out of water, they pushed 
it in before the favouring west wind by vessels made 
fast to the after-sides, and running it well up on to 
the mole, set fire to its load, swung the yards out 
forward, emptied the caldrons upon towers and 
stockade, and made off in boats or by swimming as 
best they could. The Macedonians who essayed 
to check the flames were a helpless target for the 
fire poured in upon them from the ships that 
hung about the pier. In an hour the whole work 
of weeks and months was undone. Towers and 
stockade were destroyed, the head of the pier dis- 
mantled and scattered, and the hope of the builders 
dismayed. But Alexander's energy was undaunted. 
He saw only the need for larger and more determined 
effort. First of all, he planned to lay a wider mole 
capable of supporting larger works of defense, but 
without the aid of a fleet he saw that even this was 
vain. So leaving his engineers to begin the larger 
work and rebuild the towers, he hastened off with a 
body of guards to see what could be done at Sidon 
toward collecting a fleet. 

Fortune favoured him. Spring was just opening, 
and the Phoenician ships that had been with the 
Persian fleet in the iEgean were beginning to desert, 
and taking advantage of the weather, were finding 
their way back home. Issus was beginning to bear 
its fruit on the sea. First came to Alexander's 
standard the ships of Aradus and Byblus and Sidon, 
cities that had long before opened their doors to the 
conqueror. Then came ten from Rhodes, three 
from Solce and Mallus, Cilician towns, and ten from 



314 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

Lycia; but best of all came sailing into the port of 
Sidon a little later one hundred and twenty ships 
with which the kings of Cyprus expressed their 
anxiety to get upon the winning side. " Unto him 
that hath shall be given," and Alexander found 
himself now suddenly possessed of a superb fleet 
from two hundred to two hundred and fifty strong. 
From this time on the siege of Tyre became a differ- 
ent undertaking. Heretofore Alexander could ap- 
proach it only by land, and even that he had to 
make. Now he could outmatch Tyre in ships and 
could blockade it, chief city of ships as it was. 

While the ships and the engines of war were being 
prepared for the new campaign, Alexander utilised 
the time for a ten days' raid through the mountains 
of Antilibanus, which lay between Sidon and Da- 
mascus, and which, stretching for eighty miles in a 
line parallel to the Lebanon range from Mount 
Hermon, source of the river Jordan at the south, 
commanded the highways leading from Ccele-Syria 
to the sea. The Ituraean tribes who inhabited the 
region, and who, under the name of Druses, have 
maintained a distinct existence down to the present 
day, readily submitted to the Macedonian sway, 
and assured it thus a widened hem of conquered 
coast. Minor enterprises like this show not only how 
unremitting was his zeal, but how methodically 
thorough his conquests were. In a picture of the 
whole the brilliancy of hazard and hap yields 
homage to a central scheme on which the genius of 
plan and forethought has set its stamp. On his re- 
turn to Sidon a welcome surprise awaited him. 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 3 1 5 

Cleander, who more than a year before had been 
sent off to the Peloponnesus to enlist mercenaries, 
had arrived with four thousand soldiers, a timely- 
reinforcement for the little army of invasion. 

The day on which Alexander set forth from Sidon 
with his newly acquired fleet marked for him a new 
era in warfare. Thus far he had reached in conquest 
only what his footing on the solid land allowed; 
now he stood upon the seas as well. A few hours' 
sail brought the fleet off the northern harbour of 
Tyre. There it halted, drawn up in full array, chal- 
lenging to battle. The Tyrians had been preparing 
to meet it, but when from the battlements they 
counted the number of the ships, they saw, to their 
surprise and dismay, for they had not reckoned on 
the accession of the Cyprian ships, that they were 
outmatched. Then it became for them merely a 
matter of defending their harbour, and they has- 
tened to block the mouth with triremes set closely 
side to side and facing the sea. Three of these that 
protruded beyond the rest were rammed and sunk 
in the onset of Alexander's ships, but that was all. 
The newcomers now withdrew to moorings along 
the shore of the mainland on each side of the mole. 
Tyre had two harbour, two almost circular pools 
with narrow entrances, one at the north called the 
Sidonian harbour, the other at the south called the 
Egyptian. The Cyprian ships of Alexander were 
moored now by the shore to the north of the mole 
to watch the northern harbour, and the rest of the 
fleet to the south to guard the other. 

Meantime the preparations for the siege were 



3 16 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

pressed forward with renewed vigour and on a 
vastly greater scale. Mechanicians and engineers 
had been summoned from all Phoenicia and Cyprus; 
great engines of war of every description and device 
were in construction; the mole was widening and 
pushing up closer and closer toward the city walls. 
Under protection of the fleet the workmen were 
safe from attack by sea, and the work throve. Al- 
ready they were coming almost under the shadow 
of the massive eastern wall; its battlements lifted 
themselves in dizzy height one hundred and fifty 
feet above the water's edge; above these rose the 
mighty towers. The walls were of hewn stone set 
in cement. Thousands of armed men swarmed the 
top and manned the towers. Engines of war, the 
crude artillery of the time, were set to hurl their 
missiles of death — great stones, iron-shod shafts, 
balls of fire — down upon the workmen and their 
works. Now the besiegers began to ply the rams, 
great, metal-weighted beams that swung out across 
the water-gap and thudded against the solid 
masonry. Every day the battle drew closer its 
lines. Not only from the head of the pier were 
the siege-engines brought against the beleaguered 
town ; great scows and transport-boats were used as 
floating foundations for siege-towers and engines. 
These the Macedonians tried to push close to shore 
under the walls,but great boulders pitched down from 
the walls blocked the channel and forbade approach. 
Ships with wrecking apparatus, lifts, and derricks 
were sent to remove them, but Tyrian triremes, 
covered with leather screens to protect their men 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 317 

from missiles, slipped in and cut the cables, leaving 
the ships to drift away before the wind. Then the 
Macedonians set a line of like leather-armored ships 
as a barrier before those that were clearing the 
channel, but still the Tyrians found a way. Divers 
swam under the barricade of ships and cut the 
cables. Then chains of iron were used instead of 
cables, and slowly the work went on. One by one 
the boulders were lifted with cranes and discharged 
into the deeper water, and finally an anchorage was 
cleared close under the walls. At a dozen places 
now instead of one the wall was beset. Every day 
the zeal of battle grew, every day the hope of the 
beleaguered sank. In vain they strained their eyes 
each morning to see against the western horizon the 
sails of the promised Carthaginian fleet of rescue. 
At last came only one ship bringing the thirty com- 
missioners who were to offer the annual sacrifice in 
Melkart's temple and pay the honours due the 
mother-city — vain honours now, when help was 
needed. But Carthage had her excuse : her hands 
were full at home. She was beginning to feel the 
competition of Sicilian Syracuse, which two decades 
later was to become a peril. 

As thus one by one every hope and device failed 
before the persistent energy of the besieger, the 
Tyrians determined in last resort to try issue with 
the fleet. Their ships, divided between the two 
harbours at extreme ends of the city, could not be 
massed for united action, neither could they, except 
at great disadvantage, venture out through the nar- 
row mouth of either harbour. They awaited, there- 



3 18 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

fore, an opportunity when the enemy were off their 
guard. One noonday, when the Cyprian ships that 
guarded the northern harbour were moored over by 
the mainland north-east of the city, and many of the 
sailors had gone ashore in quest of water and pro- 
visions, and off to the south of the mole, as men 
could see from the city wall, Alexander had retired 
to his tent, no doubt to enjoy his siesta, it seemed 
clear that the Tynans' chance had come. Thirteen 
of the best ships — three quinqueremes, three quad- 
riremes, seven triremes — manned with the pick of 
the oarsmen and the best-armed fighting men, lay 
ready at the harbour's mouth. Smoothly, silently, 
without boatswain's pipe, they glided out in long 
single file straight to the north. Not till they had 
swung about toward the east in battle front, and, 
scarcely more than half a mile distant from the 
Cyprian ships, broke the silence with creak and 
splash of hurrying oars, and shriek of the pipes, and 
shouts of the men who cheered the rowers on, did 
the men by the shore take the alarm. Five minutes 
and they were there. At the first onset the Tyrians 
bored through the great five-banked galley of Pny- 
tagoras, King of Cyprian Salamis, and sank An- 
drocles's ship and that of Pasicrates of Curium. 
Others were driven ashore against the rocks. Some 
of the one hundred and twenty ships were entirely 
empty of men. The Tyrians scurried over the sides 
of their ships to slash and batter and scuttle their 
helpless prey. The work of destruction went mer- 
rily on. But quickly the sailors who were left with 
the fleet rallied to hold them in check ; others came 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 319 

hurrying back from the land, and help, too, was 
already coming — the fleet on the south. Alexander, 
after retiring to his tent, had not, it seems, remained 
there long, but for some reason, and contrary to his 
wont, had returned to the ships by the shore. When 
the alarm was given he was ready to act. With a 
few quinquiremes and five triremes he immediately 
pushed out upon the sea, ordering others to follow 
as fast as they could be manned. The mole inter- 
vened between him and the scene of action. So he 
sailed out to the west to make the circuit of the city, 
determined at the least to cut off the retreat of the 
enemy. He had about two and a half miles to go 
before reaching the mouth of the northern harbour. 
In twenty minutes he could do it. The Tyrians, 
who crowded the battlements of the city walls to 
behold the spectacle, saw the movement of Alexan- 
der's ships and appreciated its purpose. They saw, 
what they had not expected, that Alexander was in 
person present. Exultation turned to dismay. 
Hundreds of voices were raised to warn the Tyrian 
ships of their danger and call them to return, and 
" as their shouts could not be heard for the din of 
those engaged in the fight, by various signs and 
signals, first this, then that, they urged them to 
come back " (Arrian). Too late the men saw their 
danger. They hurried back toward the harbour, 
but Alexander caught them off the entrance. Many 
of the ships were shattered or sunk by ramming; 
their crews jumped overboard, and most of the men 
escaped by swimming ashore. A few of the ships 
slipped by into the harbour, but one quinquereme 



320 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

and one quadrireme were captured outright in the 
very mouth of the harbour. All of this happened 
within an hour, inside a petty area scarcely two 
miles wide, and immediately under the eyes of be- 
sieged and besiegers; but it was the last dying 
struggle of the Phcenico-Persian power in the Medi- 
terranean, and it was Alexander's only sea-fight. 
He made on land his conquest of the sea. 

With nothing longer to fear from the Tyrian fleet, 
the besiegers now more boldly than ever pushed 
their attack upon the walls. The engines on the 
end of the mole still made poor headway against the 
massive walls which there confronted them ; the 
walls at the north-eastern corner proved equally in- 
vulnerable against the transport-engines concen- 
trated there : but a weak spot was found one day in 
the southern wall hard by the " Egyptian harbour," 
a narrow breach was opened, and an attack was 
made by a storming-party, only, however, to be 
sharply repulsed. The breach had not been wide 
enough ; the attack had been made on too small a 
scale. The Tyrians hurried to cover the breach 
from within, but the vulnerable spot had been 
found, and Alexander awaited only the opportunity 
of fair weather and a quiet sea to renew the on- 
slaught, and this time to support it by a general 
attack at every vulnerable point in the circuit of the 
wall. 

On the third day the opportunity came. The 
main attack was directed against the southern wall. 
Here the engines soon tore and raked a wide, yawn- 
ing gap. The moment their work was complete two 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 321 

great ships crowded with armed men pushed their 
way in to displace the engine-transports. In one 
was Alexander himself and the light guards called 
the hypaspists, whom Admetus commanded ; in the 
other were picked men from the phalanx. Long 
bridges like gang-planks were thrown across from 
the decks to the debris of the ruined wall. In an 
instant they swarmed with hurrying men. Admetus 
was the first to reach the wall, and, transfixed with 
a spear, the first to die. Sharp and bitter was the 
struggle. From a handful the intruders grew to 
scores and hundreds. They fought to avenge their 
slain captain, and the presence of their King inspired 
them. The Tyrians fought for the last hope of their 
homes. Never before had foemen set his foot on 
the island soil of Tyre. Step by step the besiegers 
won their way. Some scrambled up the ruin and 
gained the battlements of the wall at the right; 
others followed, and with them Alexander, at the 
head, pushed on along the rampart platform toward 
the north, till, reaching the palace, which communi- 
cated with the wall, they found a way down by its 
stairways into the heart of the city. 

Meanwhile the city had been attacked on every 
side. Vessels equipped with artillery and filled with 
bowmen and slingers had sailed up to close range 
under the walls, and poured their fire in upon the 
defenders of the walls, distracting their attention 
and dividing the defense. Simultaneously also the 
entrance of both harbours had been forced by the 
fleets, and the Tyrian ships shattered, scuttled, 
driven ashore. From the northern harbour, where 



322 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

the defense was weaker, the approaches to the city 
had been captured, and here a force of soldiery 
entered to join those now pouring out through the 
palace doors into the narrow alleys of the town. 

The Tyrians, who had now forsaken the wall, ral- 
lied for their last stand before the shrine of Agenor, 
and here the battle resolved itself into massacre. 
The rest of the story may follow in Arrian's own 
words : 

" The main body of the Tyrians deserted the wall when 
they saw it in the enemy's hands, but rallied opposite what 
is known as the Agenor shrine, and there faced the Mace- 
donians. Against these Alexander advanced with his 
hypaspists, slew those who fought there, and pursued 
those who fled. Great was the slaughter also wrought 
by those who had already entered the city from the har- 
bour, as well as by the detachment under Ccenus's com- 
mand; for the Macedonians spared nothing in their 
wrath, being angry at the length of the siege, and par- 
ticularly because the Tyrians, having captured some of 
their men on the way from Sidon, had taken them up on 
the top of the wall where it could be seen from the camp, 
and there had slaughtered them and thrown their bodies 
into the sea. About eight thousand of the Tyrians were 
slain; of the Macedonians, besides Admetus, twenty of 
the hypaspists fell during the assault, and in the whole 
siege about four hundred." 

The city was at the end captured more easily and 
quickly than the Macedonians had expected. This 
is evident from an anecdote of Plutarch's: 

" One day when Alexander, with a view to resting the 







ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

FROM THE CUST IN THE LOUVRE. 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 323 

great body of his army from the many hardships recently 
incurred, was bringing only small bodies of troops against 
the walls, and that more to keep the enemy busy than 
with any prospect of advantage, it happened that Aris- 
tander, the soothsayer, was engaged in sacrificing. After 
inspecting the entrails he announced to the bystanders 
with all assurance that the city would be surely taken 
within that month. This produced considerable merri- 
ment and derision, for the day happened to be the last 
day of the month. The King, seeing the embarrassment 
of the soothsayer, and being always anxious to maintain 
the credit of the predictions, gave orders to set the calen- 
dar back one day, and sounding the trumpets, made a 
more serious attack than had been originally planned. 
So brilliant was the assault that the other troops in the 
camp could not deny themselves joining in; whereupon 
the Tyrians gave way, and the city was taken that day." 

Though many of the inhabitants had left the 
city, a great many — according to Diodorus more 
than half the population — escaping to Carthage, 
there was left a great mass of old men, women, and 
children to pass into the hands of the slave-dealer. 
Diodorus says thirteen thousand; Arrian, who reck- 
ons men and mercenaries too, and who also omits 
mention of two thousand men-at-arms, put to death, 
as Diodorus says, by hanging, gives the number of 
those sold into slavery at about thirty thousand. 
The entire population of the city before the siege 
was probably not less than from seventy-five to one 
hundred thousand. 

Those who had taken refuge in the temple of Her- 
cules, including the King and the magistrates, as well 



324 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

as the Carthaginian envoys, were given their free- 
dom. After sacrificing to Hercules, and dedicating 
to the god the engine with which the wall had been 
battered down, and the Tyrian sacred ship, which 
had been captured, Alexander celebrated his victory 
with a grand military parade and naval review and 
with the inevitable athletic sports and torch-race — 
all this in honour of Hercules (Melkart), Tyre's 
patron saint, an old friend of Greeks and Mace- 
donians, now found again, and this time on his 
native heath. 

Some time before the capture of Tyre, Darius had 
sent a second embassy to Alexander, making more 
attractive propositions than the first. They in- 
cluded offers to cede all territory west of the Eu- 
phrates, to pay the sum of ten thousand talents, to 
give the hand of his daughter in marriage, to be- 
come an ally and friend, while all that was asked 
was the return of his wife, mother, and children. 
When these proposals were first announced in the 
council of the companions Parmenion is reported to 
have been greatly impressed and to have said: " If 
I were Alexander, I should be glad to secure peace 
on these terms and end the continual risk." To 
this Alexander replied: " So should I, if I were 
Parmenion; but as I am Alexander, my answer is 
what it is." When Darius received the answer, which 
was virtually a repetition of the former one, he saw 
there was no hope of coming to terms, and so began 
fresh preparations for war. 

Alexander, however, continued his plan of keep- 
ing to the coast, and advanced into Palestine. Here 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre. 325 

all the cities readily submitted except Gaza, which 
prepared for determined resistance. This city, one 
of the five ancient cities of the Philistines, about 
one hundred and fifty miles south of Tyre, was 
located about two miles back from the sea, on the 
old trade-route between Syria and Egypt, and was, 
as it is to-day, one of the most important points in 
Syria. It was garrisoned by a body of Arabian 
mercenaries, and provisioned for a long siege. 
Built as it was upon an elevation in the plain, its 
walls rising from an artificially prepared foundation 
sixty feet above the level of the adjacent terrain, it 
appeared impossible to bring the siege-engines to 
bear. Alexander's experts informed him that on 
this account it would be impossible to take the city 
by force. 

The conqueror of Tyre and candidate for the 
world-empire could not afford to recognise an im- 
possibility. He therefore proceeded to construct on 
the south side, where the wall appeared weakest, a 
gigantic mound from which to operate the siege- 
engines. This mound was carried to the astonish- 
ing height of two hundred and fifty feet, to support 
which a breadth of twelve hundred feet was given it 
at the base. During a sally made by the defenders 
in order to destroy the siege-engines, Alexander 
was severely wounded by an arrow from a catapult, 
which passed clean through his shield and his 
cuirass, and penetrated his shoulder, but spared his 
life. Gradually the wall was battered down or 
undermined. Three assaults were repulsed, but 
finally, after two months of siege, the city was 



326 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

taken. Nearly the entire male population perished 
fighting to the death. The women and children 
were sold into slavery. The city was repeopled 
from the neighbouring population, and made a per- 
manently garrisoned fortress. 

While Alexander was at Gaza he received notice 
of the action of the council of the Greek States at 
Corinth, held on the occasion of the Isthmian games 
of that year, which had voted to send to him by 
fifteen special commissioners a golden crown in 
recognition of the victory at Issus — a recognition 
tardy enough, and almost too late to be longer of 
consequence or value to the conqueror of Tyre and 
lord of the ^Egean, or for the Greeks themselves a 
testimony to aught but their own fickleness. 

The Jewish writers, particularly Josephus, report 
that after the capture of Gaza Alexander went to 
Jerusalem, was received by the high priest, and 
offered sacrifice in the temple. The absence of all 
allusion to this in any of the historians of Alexander, 
as well as of any mention of the Jews either by them 
or the historians of the next century, coupled with 
the self-contradictions and improbabilities of the 
narrative, makes it unlikely that the story is any- 
thing more than an invention of the Hellenists of 
the first century B.C., who sought to establish in this 
way, as in others, an early connection with Greek 
history. 

It was November (332 B.C.) when Alexander set 
forth along the coast to enter Egypt. An entire 
year since the battle of Issus (November, 333 B.C.) 
had been spent in Phoenicia and Palestine. The 



332 B.C.] The Siege of Tyre, 327 

task of isolating Persia from the Mediterranean was 
advancing, however, toward its completion. At 
Sidon and Tyre he had dammed the ancient channel 
by which the trade and civilisation of the Euphrates 
valley, following the reverse of the river course, had 
found an outlet into the western sea. The ALgea.il 
had become almost an inland sea of Alexander's 
Macedonian empire — a Greek sea instead of a Greek 
boundary. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ALEXANDER IN EGYPT. 
332-331 B.C. 

SINCE the conqueror had entered Asia two and 
a half years had elapsed. One-third of his 
brief reign was spent, but the land area of his 
conquests included yet scarcely more than a tenth 
part of what they were to be. It was not, however, 
land that he was now conquering: it was. the sea — 
the sea included between Greece, Asia, Egypt, which 
the fates of geography had made to be the central 
mart and meeting-place of all the civilisations which 
his world could know. To it were tributary the 
two great river valleys in which had shaped them- 
selves the two types of ordered life that summarised 
the beginnings of human civilisation. Egypt found 
its natural outlet with the Nile ; Mesopotamia, re- 
versing the currents of the Euphrates, poured in its 
influences through the broad delta of Tyre and 
Sidon, or let them slowly sift through the sands of 
Asia Minor. In this sea the culture of Egypt and 
Assyria, as the passive element, met the aggressive 

328 



332-331 B.C.] Alexander in Egypt. 329 

will of occidentalism, which was to shape and apply 
it, and out of the union was begotten the history 
which up to the present century, neglecting the 
world-half of India and China, we have been wont 
to call the world-history. It is because Alexander 
conquered first this sea and then its tributaries that 
his career is the navel of history. 

As far as the land is concerned he had thus far 
traversed three areas of human life and habitation : 
first, the western hem of Asia Minor (from May to 
November, 334 B.C.), where the Greek spirit, lan- 
guage, and blood were predominant; second, the 
central and southern districts of Asia Minor (from 
November, 334 B.C., to November, 333 B.C.), 
where, with all variety of tribe and tongue, Carian 
and Phrygian elements predominated, but no na- 
tional unity existed or ever had, except such as the 
Lydian Empire of two centuries before achieved ; 
third, the narrow coast selvage of Syria (from No- 
vember, 333 B.C., to November, 332 B.C.), where 
the Semitic spirit and the Semitic tongue were 
in full sway, and the name of Phoenicia set the 
standard. 

Next in his way lay Egypt. The march of his 
phalanx took thus in review, one after the other, the 
nations and civilisations of men. Hitherto he had 
seen, though, only the middlemen who were hand- 
ing on what they had received ; now he was coming 
to a fountain-head. If an established order of 
civilised life anywhere in the wide world can be 
identified as born alone of the soil where it abides, 
that can be claimed most confidently for the 



330 Alexander the Great. [332 b.c- 

civilisation which clings to the banks of the Nile. 
44 Egypt is the Nile, and the Nile is Egypt," and 
the long experience of generations of men, whose 
lives the hungry desert bound to the river-line, as 
to a life-line in the waste of waters, had taught these 
men to tolerate one another, and created for them 
a scheme and polity of existence so well confirmed 
that innovation found no hope. By virtue of its 
very longness Egypt could not be rid of itself. So 
it tolerated itself and abode stable. 

The real Egypt, the fertile Nile valley from the 
first cataract to the sea, though stretching out in a 
length equal to the distance from Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, to Portland, Maine, is in area scarcely one 
fourth the size of Pennsylvania, and of this area 
more than half is included within the Delta. Above 
Cairo it is merely a strip of verdure, rarely more 
than from four to eight miles broad, sharply bounded 
by the bluffs which bear the desert. Within this 
narrow band Egyptian life took its shape, coming 
to a focus now at Memphis, the old metropolis of 
Lower Egypt, across the river from modern Cairo, 
now at Thebes in Upper Egypt. Long centuries of 
almost undisturbed isolation fixed it in moulds of 
custom, thought, and religion firmer, perhaps, than 
human life has ever elsewhere known. It was an 
intensely practical life. Realism coloured all its 
thought. The solidity of its religious institutions, 
guaranteed by a powerful priesthood which swayed 
society and state and held the reins of the Nile, was 
no product of imagination or of fervour, but a wit- 
ness merely to its unfaltering conservatism. Even 



331 B.C.] Alexander i7i Egypt. 331 

the yearning for the life beyond expressed itself in 
crude practical device, not in visions or in specu- 
lations. The typical Egyptian was then, as he is 
to-day, a man of peace, averse to rudeness and brutal- 
ity, courteous, patient, practical, and prudent. The 
Greek thought him effeminate, and, from Herodotus 
on, the Greek writers refer with abhorrence to a de- 
velopment of " women's rights" in Egypt which 
made men the subjects of the women. It is indeed 
a fact that under Egyptian law married women had 
independent property rights and rights of contract. 
Wealth, too, it appears, was often largely in the 
hands of women. Egyptian history persistently 
refuses to speak in terms of dates, but sure it is that 
the civilisation into which Alexander was here to be 
introduced represented an antiquity before which 
all that he had seen, had heard of, and had read of 
in his native Macedonia or Greece, or in the lands 
through which his march had brought him, was 
paltry modernity itself. Even the Trojan days, 
with which Homer had inspired his youthful ideal- 
ism, reached back at the best but a fourth or fifth 
of the way to the building of the Pyramids, and of 
the centuries that looked down from those hoary 
heads upon Napoleon and his men two out of every 
three were there to look down upon Alexander. It 
was not likely that a man of Alexander's temper 
and of his keen susceptibility to all that spoke, 
whether in the language of religion, art, or custom, 
with the authority of antiquity and through the 
forms of ancient culture, should pass by this all un- 
moved and unchanged. He was a youth fresh from 



332 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C.- 

the New World, alert-minded and sensitive; here 
was his London and Rome. 

From Gaza the one way leading into Egypt was 
the old caravan route along the shore, by which 
through the ages Palestine and Egypt had been 
joined. In seven days it brought Alexander and 
his army to Pelusium, the " key of Egypt," a 
strongly fortified city near the easternmost mouth 
of the Nile. A few miles to the west of its site 
passes now the track of the Suez Canal, approaching 
its exit at Port Said. The city opened its gates to 
the conqueror. Nowhere, indeed, in all the land 
was opposition awaiting him. The Persian satrap 
Masakes, who had been appointed successor of 
Sabakes, slain a year before in the battle of Issus, 
found himself utterly without resource in fleet, 
army, or good-will, for a defense. The people of 
the land with one accord hailed the coming of 
Alexander as the coming of a liberator. For almost 
two centuries they had borne the detested yoke of 
Persia, and the victor of Issus they had esteemed to 
be their own avenger. Masakes, therefore, hastened 
to offer surrender of the land, and so without the 
striking of a blow Alexander added to his empire a 
domain almost equal in extent to all his previous 
conquests. With this act the long, strange history 
of ancient Egypt was closed. Egypt was merged 
in the world-all, and a new Egypt began its life. 

From Pelusium the Macedonian army proceeded 
in triumphal march along the east bank of the Pel- 
usian arm of the Nile. The fleet which had been 
in waiting at Pelusium attended it. Most of the 



331 B.C.] Alexander in E^ypt. 333 

way led through the " land of Goshen," Israel's 
place of sojourn a thousand years and more before, 
and brought the army, after a march of a little over 
one hundred miles, to the famous old Heliopolis 
(On), the " City of the Sun," whence tradition says 
that Joseph had his wife, Asenath, daughter of Poti- 
phera, a priest of the sun (Gen. xli., 45). Here 
were still standing, as they had been for thirteen 
hundred years, along with others of their kind, 
doing honour to the god as guards about his temple, 
the two obelisks which three centuries later were 
transplanted by Augustus Caesar to Alexandria, and 
now in these latest years, following the track of em- 
pire, have come to find Northern homes, the one on 
the Thames Embankment in London, the other in 
Central Park, New York. 

A few miles beyond Heliopolis Alexander was at 
the site of modern Cairo, the apex of the Delta. 
Then crossing the Nile, now the undivided river, he 
approached Memphis, the capital. 

On the terraced bluffs which marked the sharp 
frontier between the life of the plain and the desert 
of death were arrayed in stately order, relieved 
against the sands and the western sky, from Gizeh 
southward fifteen miles to Dahshur, the Pyramids, 
which, mingled with countless humbler habitations, 
marked the world's greatest city of the dead. Be- 
low in the plain stretching itself out in miles of con- 
tinuous streets and homes, was Egypt's greatest city 
of the living. Its focus was found in the temple of 
its local deity, the god Ptah, the world-builder, who 
was worshipped in the form of a living bull called 



334 Alexander the Great. [332 b.c- 

Apis. In the life of a bull chosen by his priests 
Ptah found his ever-recurring incarnations, and re- 
ceived the most distinguished honours. At death 
the bull was buried with most elaborate and costly 
obsequies, and the Serapeum, constructed for the 
tombs of the long succession, still remains in mon- 
strous vaulted ruins, where no less than three thou- 
sand monuments of different wearers of the Apis 
honour have been found. The city of the dead has 
far outlived the city of the living, and Memphis, 
enormous as it was, has yielded to centuries of 
spoilers, and all but vanished off the face of the 
earth. The founding of Alexandria marked the 
beginning of its decline. 

On entering the city, Alexander hastened to pay 
the honour of special sacrifice to Apis. Nothing 
was more likely to win him the sympathy of the 
people, especially as his action stood in severest 
contrast with the traditions of Persian sacrilege — of 
Cambyses, who with his own hand had wounded to 
the death a sacred bull, and of Darius Ochus, who 
had caused one to be slaughtered. Diodorus says: 
" The Egyptians, in view of the fact that the Per- 
sians had violated their holy rites and had domin- 
eered rudely over them, welcomed the Macedonians 
gladly."* 

In this action Alexander was thoroughly consist- 
ent with himself. Wherever he went he treated 
with respect the local religion. He was evidently 
by his practice a believer in home rule — in matters 
of religion. In this he was not acting merely the^ 

* Diodorus, xvii., 49. 



331 B.C.] Alexander in Egypt. 335 

part of a clever politician. His attitude toward 
faith was never that of easy unconcern. He was 
no agnostic. A vein of deep religious mysticism, 
perhaps inherited or learned from his mother Olym- 
pias, ran through his nature and coloured all his 
conduct. He stood with awe and respect, though 
never with terror, in the presence of supernatural 
power controlling a realm of which the world of 
ordinary things was only a feeble part, and control- 
ling it with foresight and intelligence, though by 
ordinary men but feebly discerned. He was no 
eclectic in matters of religion. The foresight and 
purpose of the power outside and beyond betrayed 
itself through many a rift in the veil, and he had 
learned no canons of criticism, not even the com- 
mon one called prejudice. He had too much emo- 
tional insight to be an agnostic, and had in a short 
life seen too much of the world to be a bigot. 

Nowhere in the world has the religious factor 
played a larger part in the life of a people than in 
ancient Egypt. No wonder that even the four 
months of Alexander's stay exercised so powerful 
an influence in shaping and stimulating his religious 
sensibilities. He was, as it were, in a great temple, 
always in the presence of the religious expression, 
and the weird issue of his visit to the sanctuary of 
Jupiter Ammon must be judged and interpreted in 
the light of this experience. 

The mass of the army, which could not have 
numbered altogether much above twenty thousand 
men, was left in winter quarters at Memphis. Alex- 
ander, accompanied by the hypaspists, the archers, 



336 Alexander the Great, [332 b.c- 

the Agrianians, and the age'ma of cavalry, in all 
perhaps four or five thousand men, sailed down the 
river to Canopus (modern Abukir), at the mouth of 
the westernmost branch of the Nile. From here he 
passed into the Mareotis Lake, then a large body of 
water fifteen miles wide, navigable for the largest 
vessels, but now little more than a swamp. In 
Strabo's time it was fed by numerous canals from 
the Nile, and was the all-important means of com- 
munication with the inland. Now, cut off from the 
Nile, its waters are salt, and the fertility which in 
antiquity lined its shores and yielded the wines 
which Horace and Virgil extol is displaced by sandy 
dunes. At a spot about thirteen or fourteen miles 
south-west of Canopus, on the long, narrow strip of 
sandy land separating the Mareotis Lake from the 
sea, Alexander went ashore, and, being deeply im- 
pressed by the favourable location, decided to build 
a city. The place seemed to be the meeting-point 
of the whole Nile region with the Mediterranean 
world. On one side was the lake-harbour connected 
with the Nile ; on the other were two sea-harbours, 
sheltered from the open sea by the island Pharos, 
four-fifths of a mile offshore, the one opening to the 
west, the other to the east. Here was to be equip- 
ped the only safe harbour open for ships on the six- 
hundred-mile stretch of Asiatic and African coast 
from Joppa to Paraetonium. The neck of land 
itself was about a mile to a mile and a half wide. 
A city built upon it would be reasonably protected 
from land attack and yet accessible from the land. 
Through the Nile and the old canal of Pharaoh 



331 B.C.] Alexander m Egypt. 337 

Necho, connecting it with the Red Sea, the com- 
merce of Egypt, Arabia, and India could here be 
brought to meet the commerce of the Mediterranean. 

There are no indications that Alexander set out 
on this particular excursion through the lake with a 
view of seeking a city site, but there can be little 
doubt that the idea was more than the impulse of a 
moment. Tyre was destroyed. The coast of 
Egypt offered no convenient harbour suitable to 
intercourse on a large scale. The encouragement 
of intercourse and mutual understanding between 
the nations was already developing as his dominant 
idea. The Greek element had long since come to 
make itself felt in the Delta, and Naucratis, a thriv- 
ing Greek settlement tolerated by Amasis in the 
sixth century B.C., was only fifty miles to the south- 
east. The custom introduced in the seventh century 
B.C., by Psammetichus I., of employing Greek mer- 
cenaries to do the fighting, toward which, with the 
decay of the warrior caste, the Egyptians themselves 
had become so averse, had served to bring Greeks 
into the land. What more probable than that 
Alexander had already framed the plan, and that 
unexpectedly the discovered site fitted it ? In any 
case, his selection was a good one, as the event 
proved. 

The Alexandria which rose on the spot became 
speedily a great city, and not by artificial stimula- 
tion, though it certainly was most fortunate in its 
first ruler, Ptolemy Soter, who succeeded Alexan- 
der, but through the operation of natural conditions. 
It proved a convenient exchange for the joint use 




338 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C.- 

of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Hence it naturally 
became the metropolis of the great world of free and 
open markets which Alexander's conquests created, 
the capital of the Hellenistic civilisation which for 
three centuries passed current as Greek, and an 
amalgamation point for the peoples such as the con- 
queror's dream had desired. Seventy-five years 
after Alexander's death it had become, after Carth- 
age and Antioch, the greatest city of the Western 
world. By the year 60 B.C. it had grown to a popu- 
lation, as Diodorus tells us, of three hundred thou- 
sand freemen, — that is to say, reckoning the slaves, 
of approximately half a million, — so that it was 
commonly regarded the greatest city of the world. 
In the first century after Christ its population was 
undoubtedly far greater — perhaps three quarters of 
a million or more — but for this definite data are 
lacking. Rome, which in Augustus's time had at 
least, according to Beloch's conservative reckoning, 
from eight hundred thousand to one million inhabit- 
ants, was the only city which had outstripped it. 

Up to Alexander's time there had been no mon- 
ster cities. The city population of Athens proper, 
together with its harbour town, was probably about 
175,000. Syracuse, in the fourth century B.C., was 
only a little larger. Corinth at the same time had, 
according to Beloch, who, however, reckons the 
slave population certainly far too low, about 70,000; 
Sparta, Argos, and Thebes, from 40,000 to 50,000; 
Selinus, from 20,000 to 25,000; Tyre and Sidon, 
not over 40,000 each. 

By the first century B.C., a time whose literature 



331 B.c.i Alexander in Egypt. 339 

affords us, through stray allusions, the first means 
of forming an estimate, the international trade of 
Alexandria had grown to enormous proportions. 
From the interior of Africa, from Arabia and India, 
caravans and fleets of merchant ships brought hither 
the rarest and most precious products which the 
new luxury of the West was demanding of all the 
lands — the spices and perfumes of Araby, gold-dust, 
precious stones, and fine fabrics from India, pearls 
from the Persian Gulf, silk from China, gold and tor- 
toise-shell from the coasts of the Red Sea, ivory from 
Africa, and grain from Egypt. Annually 120 ships, 
on an average, left the inner harbour for the long 
voyage by canal and sea to India. This was but a 
fragment of the commerce. The industries too of 
Alexandria were spurred to their utmost to provide 
wares for the return cargoes. Foremost were the pro- 
ducts of the loom, for which the city was famed, and 
which were distributed far and wide over the world, 
even to far Britain. Especially were sought the fine 
linens from the famous native flax, and the many- 
coloured textures of wool, wrought in artistic pat- 
terns and with figures of animals and men — rugs, 
portieres, and tapestries. The manufacture of paper 
from the native papyrus almost monopolised the 
trade of the world. Then there were the glass- 
blowers, whose artistic products commanded a price 
like that for cups of gold, and perfumers, and 
makers of toilet-oils and essences, whose repute 
matched that of the Parisians of to-day. No one 
in this busy city, so wrote Hadrian in 134 A.D., was 
without a craft and occupation. Even the blind 



34-0 Alexander the Great. [332 b.c- 

and the gouty were busy. " Money is their god; 
him worship Jews, Christians, and all alike.* ' 

It was a centre of learning and culture, as well as 
of industry and trade. About the university, called 
the Musaeum, and its famous library, a foundation 
of the wise Ptolemies, was assembled the best learn- 
ing of the world. The savant, or philologos, is in- 
deed, so far as Western civilisation is concerned, a 
distinctive and original Alexandrine product. It 
was through Alexandrine learning, and chiefly in 
Alexandrine guise, that Rome, and so the European 
world, received the wisdom and culture of Greece. 
Letters, philology, philosophy, mathematics, as- 
tronomy, music, law, medicine, received here their 
professional mould as branches of skilled and learned 
activity, and in such mould were transmitted and 
kept, until the Renaissance brought fresh life from 
the fountainhead. But we must return to the days 
of the beginnings. 

Alexander, after conceiving his scheme, immedi- 
ately proceeded to mark out the plan of the city, 
including the sites for market-place, streets, public 
buildings, temples of the different deities, each of 
them being especially assigned, and the circuit of 
the wall. The basis of the plan was made two main 
streets crossing each other at right angles, each, so 
says Strabo, one hundred feet wide, and lined with 
colonnades. Other streets, running parallel to these, 
laid out the whole in regular squares covering a 
length of about three miles and a width of about 
one. The excavations and investigations conducted 
by Mahmud Bey and completed in 1867 found the 



331 B.C.] Alexander in Egypt. 341 

city plan essentially as Strabo describes it. The 
two broad central avenues — that running east and 
west called the Canobus avenue, that north and 
south the Dromos (Corso) — were found with traces 
of the splendid colonnades which lined them. In 
the centre of these avenues was found still in place 
a pavement of grey granite blocks forty-six feet 
wide, which served as the carriage-way. In the 
parallel streets this pavement was only half this 
width. The private houses were low, flat-roofed, 
and of stone. The circuit of the city proper was 
found to be a little less than ten miles. For definite 
knowledge regarding the location and character of 
the great public buildings we must await the further 
revelation of the spade. Meantime we must be 
content with Strabo. Near the centre of the city 
lay the royal buildings, occupying, with their gar- 
dens, a fourth of the city's area. Here, besides the 
palaces, were the Musaeum and the Sema, the latter 
the great mausoleum in which lay inclosed in its 
alabaster coffin the body of Alexander. The site 
of the Paneum, " an artificial circular mound re- 
sembling a rocky hill, to which a winding way as- 
cends," and from which a commanding view of the 
whole city and its harbours was obtained, can now 
be identified with the knoll, 112 feet above the 
ordinary city level, which carries the reservoir of the 
modern Alexandria. Near by, on the Dromos, lay 
the Gymnasium, stretched out, with its pillared 
porches, in a length of a stadium (one-ninth of a 
mile). The island of Pharos was joined to the 
mainland by a wide mole, called the Heptastadium, 



342 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C.- 

about three quarters of a mile long, in which were 
two bridges over channels communicating between 
the eastern and the western harbours. This mole 
has now widened out into a neck of land almost a 
mile in width, on which stands the greater part of 
the modern city. At the eastern end of the island 
was built by Ptolemy Soter and his son, and com- 
pleted about 282 B.C., the famous Pharos, one of 
the " seven wonders," which became the prototype 
of all the world's lighthouses. 

A story of the first rough planning, given by all 
the sources, may best be presented in Plutarch's 
statement: 

" As chalk-dust was lacking, they laid out their lines 
on the black loamy soil with flour, first swinging a circle 
to inclose a wide space, and then drawing lines as chords 
of the arcs to complete with harmonious proportions 
something like the oblong form of a soldier's cape. 
While the King was congratulating himself on his plan, 
on a sudden a countless number of birds of various sorts 
flew over from the land and the lake in clouds, and set- 
tling upon the spot, devoured in a short time all the flour; 
so that Alexander was much disturbed in mind at the 
omen involved, till the augurs restored his confidence 
again, telling him the city he was planning was destined 
to be rich in its resources, and a feeder of the nations of 
men." 

The work of founding the city he left in the hands 
of workmen under the direction of the architect 
Dinocrates, who was certainly not a man of small 
ideas. He is the same man who once proposed to 



331 B.C.] Alexander in Egypt. 343 

carve Mount Athos, the peak which rises abruptly 
sixty-five hundred feet out of the Thracian Sea, into 
a colossal statue of Alexander, which should bear 
in one hand a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and 
from the other should pour in bold cascade a great 
mountain stream into the sea beneath. Another 
plan of his, to build in memory of Philadelphus's 
queen, Arsinoe, a temple with ceiling of lodestone, 
so that the iron statue of the goddess-queen might 
hang suspended in the air, we learn, to our regret, 
failed of fulfilment through his inopportune death. 



CHAPTER XXL 

VISIT TO THE TEMPLE OF AMMON. 
332-331 B.C. 

AT about this time — it was midwinter of 332-331 
B.C. — Alexander was visited by Hegelochus, 
the commander of his fleet in the north, who 
brought welcome intelligence concerning the final 
dispersion of the Persian fleet and the recovery of 
the island cities lost during the spring of 333 B.C. 
The Tenedans had revolted from the Persians and 
returned to Macedonian rule. Mitylene had been 
wrested from the hands of Chares, and the other 
Lesbian cities had voluntarily submitted. Another 
revolution in Chios had placed the democracy, 
friendly to Alexander, at the helm, and Cos had 
surrendered to a fleet of sixty ships sent to it at its 
own suggestion. Pharnabazus was a fugitive. The 
^Egean was therefore clear, and entirely in Alexan- 
der's control, as was also, with one sole exception, 
the complete circuit of lands contributing to its 
waters, the entire world with which Greece and the 
Greeks had dealings east of Italy and Sicily. 

344 



332-331 B.C.] Visit to the Temple of Amnion. 345 

Sparta alone remained incorrigible. We have 
seen how, four years before, she answered Alexan- 
der's summons to accept his leadership, " It is not 
tradition with us to follow others, but ourselves to 
lead others/' Ever since she had been waiting for 
opportunity to lead revolt. Spartan ambassadors 
were all the time at the court of Darius. When the 
tidings of Issus reached Greece (November, 333 B.C.) 
we remember that the Spartan King Agis was in 
conference with the Persian admiral at Siphnos. 
While the Persian power in the ^Egean was steadily 
melting away, Agis's stubbornness, fed upon des- 
peration, lifted itself into aggression. During the 
months that Alexander was busy at Tyre, Agis and 
his Spartans were making Crete a stronghold of the 
opposition, in hope of contesting through that the 
control of the sea. Some of the Greek mercenaries 
who had escaped from Issus found their way into 
Crete, and gave him the nucleus of an army. Dur- 
ing the winter of 332-331 B.C. Agis raised openly 
the standard of revolt in the Peloponnesus. The 
Eleans, the Achaeans, and, excepting Megalopolis, 
the Arcadians, joined him. A small Macedonian 
force that sought to quell the revolt was annihilated. 
Through the summer of 331 B.C. the movement 
grew. A revolt of the Illyrians kept Antipater, the 
Macedonian regent, busy at the north, and from 
week to week his much-needed coming was de- 
layed. The flame threatened to become a con- 
flagration. When news of the trouble reached 
Alexander he was far away in Mesopotamia. 
' While we are here conquering Darius," he said, 



346 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

" it seems they are having a war of the mice in 
Arcadia." The composure of his faith received its 
reward. The next tidings told how Antipater had 
at last appeared, had found the Spartans besieging 
the walls of Megalopolis, and there on the plain 
before the city, in a fearful battle which left fifty- 
three hundred of the enemy, among them King 
Agis, lying on the field, had utterly broken and 
humbled all resistance (October or November, 331 
B.C.), and received at last the submission of Sparta. 
This was a blow from which the Spartan state never 
recovered. 

But our story has carried us almost a year beyond 
the point where we left Alexander just committing 
the building of his city to his architect's hands. 
From the site of Alexandria the King turned his 
face suddenly toward the west, and began a march 
along the African coast. The Western world, which 
now lay before him — a world in whose history Sicily 
now occupied the central post — has thus far oc- 
cupied none of our attention, and will not hereafter, 
for it was as yet a world by itself, engaged with 
problems of its own, into which Alexander's brief 
career was destined not to intrude. 

Sicily was just recovering from its struggle to hold 
the Carthaginians at bay, and the Greeks of Italy 
were now beginning to feel the pressure of Rome 
from the north. In 326 B.C. Naples passed into 
Roman hands. Carthage had been too seriously 
occupied in the effort to maintain herself in the 
western Mediterranean even to bring help to her 
mother-city Tyre, or to take any part in the great 



331 B.C.] Visit to the Temple of Amnion. 347 

conflict now going on between the Greek and the 
Oriental, direct as her natural interest was. This 
fact kept her outside the range of Alexander's 
notice, and left her to be dealt with later by- 
Rome (first Punic War, 264-241 B.C.). Alexander's 
present movement westward had no designs on 
Carthage; that, for the time, belonged in another 
world. 

For two hundred miles he followed the dreary 
coast, until at Parsetonium he came to the domain 
of Cyrene, a Greek city four hundred miles farther 
on. Here met him a Cyrenian embassy offering 
presents and asking alliance, and this marked the 
western limit of his conquests. He was now left 
free to indulge his sense for the romantic. The 
necessities of war, for the present, no longer claimed 
him. He turned suddenly aside upon an errand he 
could hardly have planned from the first, as the 
route he had taken may fairly prove, and took his 
way across the desert toward the famous sanctuary 
of Ammon, nearly two hundred miles away. 

It was a difficult task he had undertaken; " for 
there were no landmarks along the road, nor mount- 
ains anywhere, nor any trees, nor any elevation of 
any sort by which a traveller might shape his course 
as sailors do by the stars " (Arrian), and often the 
wanderers seemed to have lost the way. Memories 
of the hardships and risks, the strange experiences, 
the uncanny surroundings, the unexpected deliver- 
ances, grew in later days into stories of the miracu- 
lous. One tells that two serpents glided in front of 
the line, showing it the way; another, that two 



348 Alexander the Great, L332 B.C. 

ravens flew before them " and waited for them when 
they lingered and fell behind ; but the most marvel- 
lous thing is what Callisthenes tells, that if any went 
astray by night, they would call to them and keep 
up a croaking until they brought them back on to 
the trail again." These are samples of that atmos- 
phere of the marvellous which came to surround this 
whole adventure. 

On arriving at the oracle, which was situated in 
the oasis of Siwah, a tract four or five miles wide, 
blessed with olives and palms in abundance, a spring 
of water, and the refreshment of dew, Alexander 
hastened to show his respect for the oracle, and at 
the same time to gratify his curiosity by asking 
certain questions. He first asked, so report has it, 
whether any of his father's murderers had escaped 
punishment, whereupon the priest is said to have 
rebuked him and charged him to speak with more 
respect, seeing that his father was not a mortal being. 
Changing his question, he then asked if Philip's 
murderers had all been punished. Being assured 
that they had been, he then inquired whether he 
was to gain the empire of the world. Of this he 
also received assurance. 

" This," Plutarch says, " is what most authorities give 
concerning the responses of the oracle; but Alexander 
himself, in writing to his mother, says there were certain 
secret responses, which he himself would tell her alone 
on his return. Some say the prophet, wishing, by way 
of courtesy, to address him in Greek, and intending to 
say ' paidios ' (' my boy '), made a slip on the last sound, 
and said ' fiat Did s' (' son of Zeus '). Alexander, they 



331 B.C.] Visit to the Temple of Amnion. 349 

say, welcomed the blunder, and the word went out that 
the god had addressed him as son of Zeus." 

Diodorus and Curtius Rufus report much the same, 
without indulging in the grammatical reminiscence. 
Arrian keeps on solid ground with the simple re- 
mark: " Having heard what was, as he said, agree- 
able to his desire, he set out on his way back to 
Egypt." In all probability the older authorities, 
Aristotle and Ptolemy, whom Arrian follows most 
closely, reported nothing concerning what passed 
between Alexander and the priest. Callisthenes, 
indeed, says that Alexander was entirely alone when 
he consulted the oracle. The later authorities prob- 
ably dressed out the incident with various ornament- 
ation, and all that remains of solid material seems to 
be the tradition that the priest addressed him as 
" son of Ra," or " son of Amnion," which really 
meant no more, in the language of the place and 
time, than " king." The famous response of the 
Delphic Pythia to the Spartan King Lysander,* " I 
know not whether to call thee god or man," illus- 
trates how even in the Greek sense the heroic blended 
into the divine. 

Modern historians have given to this incident a 
great importance in estimating the development of 
Alexander's character. Grote f speaks of it as 
marking " his increasing self-adoration, and inflation 
above the limits of humanity," and the same writer 
credits him from this time on with a belief that Zeus 

* Herodotus, i., 65. 

f See also Kaerst, Historische Zeitsckrift, hqdv. (1895), pp. iff., 
i 93^"m who follows in the track of Grote, 



350 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

was his real father — " a genuine faith, a simple ex- 
aggeration of that exorbitant vanity which from the 
beginning reigned so largely in his bosom." With 
this it is customary to connect a deliberate purpose, 
maintained throughout his life, of establishing the 
worship of himself as a god, and a number of inci- 
dents are cited in support of such a view. It is, 
furthermore, claimed that the trip to Siwah was 
undertaken with the premeditated purpose of ob- 
taining the sanction of the oracle for his ambition. 

While we are unquestionably dealing here with 
the folly of an abnormally successful and very young 
man, it is still worth while to seek an exact deter- 
mination of the limits of this folly. This surely 
cannot be done if the subject of it is isolated from 
all connection with his own traditional conceptions 
and his own peculiar prejudices, and treated as an 
absolute, sterilised specimen. 

The confidence in an ultimately divine origin was 
an essential part of every family tree among the 
noble families of the older Greece. All the great 
heroes were sons of gods. If Minos was the son of 
Zeus, Theseus must needs, as Bacchylides's paean 
(xvii.) shows it, prove himself Poseidon's son. The 
gods were, as ancestors, dignified to be the citizens 
of honour in the state. That was what made the 
state and gave it its dignity. It was a fraternity in 
which great immortals known as gods, were mem- 
bers — as we should call the, " honorary members." 
Alexander had always traced his origin, with pardon- 
able pride, to Hercules and Perseus. He had not, 
on that account, felt himself less human than other 




BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



331 B.C.] Visit to the Temple of Ammon. 35 1 

men. He had probably thought himself more 
" select." 

His fondness for the stories of Homer, and his 
choice of Achilles, who was goddess-born, as a pro- 
totype, quickened his fancy for the marvellous in 
genealogy. He was now in Egypt, subject to the 
profound religious impressions its sturdy faith and 
plodding piety were likely to beget. Its Pharaohs 
had always, on ascending the throne, presented 
themselves at the temple of Amun-Ra (Ammon) to 
receive his recognition : Alexander was now a 
Pharaoh, and he would do the same, choosing not 
the sanctuary at Thebes, but the one at Siwah, to 
which his great ancestor Hercules had gone. 

His mother, the fanatical, corybantic Olympias, 
had always been haunted with the delusion that her 
son was begotten of a god. That Alexander gave 
himself to such a whimsical vagary with any real or 
practical faith in sober moments is certainly to be 
doubted. It was a satisfaction to his mother that he 
visited the oracle and received such a response. The 
words of the priest made an impression, too, on his 
mind, sensitive as it was to the mystical, and under 
the glamour of his marvellous success meant some- 
thing to him in a mystical way — but how much in 
practical substance ? Plutarch's remarks are in 
point here: 

" He is said, in listening to the philosopher Psammon 
in Egypt, to have been most pleased with this remark of 
his : ' Every man is ruled by a god, because that which 
is at the head and which has the strength in each man is 
ipso facto divine.' Even more profound was the teaching 



352 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

which Alexander himself laid down on this point, to 
the effect that, though God is the common father of all 
men, in a particular way does he claim the noblest as his 
own." 

He tolerated and even demanded among the Per- 
sians the adoration ( proskynesis) characteristic of 
their court etiquette, and at times even committed, 
it appears, the odious folly of asking it from Mace- 
donians, and that, too, when it was given him as a 
divine being. Yet this was no settled plan with 
him ; it rather appears as an occasional vagary, 
though one that provoked much irritation and dis- 
gust among those who were his most loyal friends. 
It was the old Macedonians, not the Greeks, who 
made the chief protest against these notions of the 
King. The Greeks, accustomed to such mytho- 
logical conceits, could understand how little was 
really meant by them; to the Macedonians they 
were bold, prosaic claims of fact. It is furthermore, 
to be noted that the Macedonians' protests arose in 
connection with their jealousy of the King's lean- 
ings toward a new cosmopolitanism, which, in their 
view, threatened to alienate him from them and rob 
them of the fruits of victory. 

Plutarch says of him : 

" Toward the barbarians he conducted himself alto- 
gether with sternness, as one fully persuaded of his 
divine origin, yes, and parentage too, but toward the 
Greeks more reasonably and with less affectation of 
divinity. . . . Once, being wounded with an arrow 
and suffering much pain, he said: ' This which is flowing 



331 B .c.] Visit to the Temple of A mmon. 353 

here, my friends, is blood, not ichor,' and, citing a 
verse of Homer: ' Ichor, such as flows from the immortal 
gods.' At another time, when there was a heavy clap of 
thunder and everybody was frightened, Aristarchus the 
professor, who was by, said to him: 'Whether you 
could n't do something of the sort, seeing you are the 
son of Zeus ? ' With a laugh he answered: ' I have no 
mind to be a terror to my friends, as you would have 
me, who despise my table for being provided with fish 
instead of with the heads of satraps.' . . . From 
what I have said it is evident that Alexander was not 
mentally affected or insanely puffed up, but was merely 
seeking to maintain authority over others through the 
claim of divinity." 

The idea that he undertook to establish a formal 
cult of himself, and to impose it upon the nations 
under his rule, particularly upon the Greeks, lacks 
all foundation. The story that after his return to 
the West he issued a decree demanding of the Greek 
cities the payment of divine honours to himself has 
been carefully examined by Mr. Hogarth,* and 
found to rest upon no sound basis. f That after his 
death he was recognised widely as divine is un- 
doubted. It is noticeable that it is not during his 
life that his portrait appears upon the coinage to 
displace the traditional representations of the gods. 
After his death he appears on the coins as the genius 
of the Macedonian Empire, the personified bond of 
unity. 



* English Historical Review, 1887, p. 322^. 

f A like result is reached by Benedictus Niese, Historic he Zeit- 
schri/t, lxxix. (1897), p. I ff. 
2 3 



354 Alexander the Great. [332 B.C. 

That the Alexander cult, which is found in various 
places and survived down into the Roman imperial 
age, was not a creation of Alexander's lifetime could 
not be more distinctly demonstrated than by the fact 
that its institution at Alexandria itself is due to a 
successor, Ptolemy II. , fifty years or more after the 
hero's death. The notion that Alexander utilised 
the doctrine of his divinity as a fundamental and 
constitutive principle for his empire is so utterly at 
variance with the plain historical facts, so utterly 
lacking in support from any known facts, as to pos- 
sess no interest except for its absurdity. It is a 
mere nightmare of some schematising historians. 

After making rich gifts to the temple, Alexander 
returned to Memphis, where he found various dele- 
gations from Greece awaiting him. There were 
Chians and Rhodians to ask withdrawal of the gar- 
risons from their cities, delegates from Mitylene to 
seek reimbursement for their expenditures in resist- 
ing the Persians, Cyprians and Athenians and many 
others to bring congratulations and ask this or that 
remission or favour. All of them he sent away 
satisfied. 

Recruits for his army began, too, to come in from 
Antipater, and others were to meet him on his out- 
ward march at Pelusium. The month left him in 
Egypt he devoted to the organisation of its govern- 
ment. Repeating the plan he had applied in other 
provinces, the first illustration of which we saw in 
Lydia, he divided the administration among differ- 
ent departments, carrying, however, the division, 
as was suited to the greatness and complexity of 



331 B.C.] Visit to the Temple of Amnion. 355 

Egyptian population and resources, much further 
than in any previous case. The administration of 
Egypt and the government of its native population 
was separated from that of the Greeks and other 
resident foreigners. Libya and Arabia were made 
distinct administrative districts. The military and 
the financial administrations were also kept distinct. 
Garrisons were left in Pelusium and Memphis. 

Early in the spring (331 B.C.) he returned with his 
army into Phoenicia, and made halt at Tyre to effect 
the last governmental arrangements before turning 
his back on the West. Here came to greet him and 
pledge anew the loyalty of their city Athenian am- 
bassadors, borne in the sacred state trireme, the 
famous old Paralos. Their renewed request for the 
release of their countrymen taken prisoners while 
serving the Persians at Granicus was finally granted. 
At the end a great athletic and musical fete was 
inaugurated. Singers and actors came from various 
Greek cities. The Cyprian kings supplied the chor- 
uses. Stately sacrifices were offered to Hercules, the 
god of the place. A genuine Hellenic festival ; in 
reality the funeral games of the old Hellas! When 
they were over, Alexander's army turned its back 
upon the Grecian sea, the hem of which had hitherto 
been its battle-ground, and plunged into the heart 
of Asia. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA. 
331 B.C. 

THERE is no record of the time at which Alex- 
ander's army left Tyre, but it must have been 
in June or July (331 B.C.), for not until late 
in July was the Euphrates crossed at Thapsacus, 
nearly 350 miles to the north-east. Curtius Rufus 
trespasses on credulity, and claims that the actual 
march from Tyre to Thapsacus occupied only eleven 
days. A company of engineers had been sent in' 
advance to construct bridges over the river, probably 
light, temporary structures of wood, or pontoons; 
and when Alexander arrived at Thapsacus, he found 
two bridges nearly complete, but they had not been 
carried entirely to the farther shore, because a Per- 
sian force of five thousand men was posted there on 
guard. At the approach of Alexander, these troops, 
however, fled, and the bridges were speedily finished. 
Thapsacus, near the modern Rakka (Nicephorium), 
where the Euphrates is to-day about 750 feet wide, 
was in antiquity a usual place of crossing; nowadays 

356 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 357 

the caravans cross the stream a little farther up, at 
Bir, on their way to Aleppo, a hundred miles or 
more to the west from Rakka. 

It was now in the heat of midsummer, and Alex- 
ander, in the interest of the health of his troops, 
avoided the plain of Mesopotamia, and instead of 
moving south-east toward Babylon, marched to the 
north, keeping the Euphrates on his left, until he 
reached the highlands at the foot of the Armenian 
mountains. This route, in addition to the advant- 
age of climate, afforded better means for provision- 
ing his army. Persian scouts who were taken 
prisoners here told that Darius had left Babylon and 
was now encamped, with his army, on the eastern 
side of the Tigris, by Gaugamela. He had sur- 
mised that the march of Alexander would bring him 
to the Tigris near this point, and had taken his 
position there with a view to defending the ford. 

The spot he had chosen lay near the village of 
Gaugamela, but vulgar tradition has always asso- 
ciated the name of the battle that was to follow 
with Arbela (modern Erbel), a city some fifty miles 
to the east. Near this point the great routes of in- 
land communication met and crossed, as they do 
to-day, at Mosul, hard by on the western bank, and 
as they had done from the dawn of history, when 
Nineveh, whose unheeded mounds were now almost 
in sight of the camp, was the goal of all the cara- 
vans. Here passed the great road joining Susa to 
Sardis and the far West, and here met it the eastern 
route from Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), farther 
Asia, and India, the southern route from Babylon 



358 Alexander the Great. [331 b.c. 

and the Persian Gulf, and the northern from Armenia 
and the Euxine at Trebizond. 

The trade routes between India and the Western 
world were in antiquity, as they have been ever 
since, the great arteries of the world's wealth.* 
They gave life to the lands through which they 
passed, as the sweet Nile waters do to the deserts 
traversed by their branches and canals. Their 
changing courses have all through the ages deter- 
mined the flow and deposit of wealth and the 
location of empire. The lands and the wealth 
Alexander was to conquer had been enriched by 
the overland trade which for centuries had found 
its outlet through Phoenicia to the West. His later 
discovery of the sea route from India to the Persian 
Gulf offered the suggestion of another route, which, 
with the breaking up of his empire, made for a while 
the shorter land way up the Euphrates valley, on 
the line of the mediaeval and modern Busrah, Bag- 
dad, and Damascus, the preferred highway. But as 
the Parthian empire (second century B.C. to the 
third century A.D.) rose to throttle this, another 
way prepared by Alexander, that by the Red Sea, 
Egypt, and Alexandria, came in to take its place, 
and in Roman times Egypt was the great distribut- 
ing centre. Then for a while Constantinople, then 
the Mohammedan rulers of Egypt and Persia, con- 
trolled the trade, until, with the close of the cru- 
sades and the increase of the European demand for 



* For the suggestion of the ideas embodied in the following para- 
graph I am largely indebted to my former colleague, Professor 
Morse-Stephens. 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 359 

luxuries, it passed into the hands of those who from 
the north coasts of the Mediterranean distributed to 
Europe, and Venice and Genoa emerged into great- 
ness and wealth. Then came, with Vasco da Gama's 
discovery of the route around the Cape of Good 
Hope (1497), a violent diversion from the old chan- 
nels. Lisbon became the distributing centre for 
Europe, and the riches of India poured into the lap 
of Portugal. The Dutch and English were content 
to play the part of middlemen, and to distribute 
from Lisbon to northern Europe, until Spain laid 
her hand on Portugal, and the folly of Philip II. in 
closing the port of Lisbon to Dutch and English 
vessels sent first Dutch (1595) and then English 
ships (1601) direct to India, and destroyed the 
monopoly of the Indian trade which Portugal for a 
century had maintained. The result is the wealth 
and empire of England. Now, in these latter days, 
the opening of the Suez Canal has brought the trade 
route back to one of its old channels, and made it 
essential for England to hold Egypt. It will not 
be long before a railway connecting the Levant with 
the head of the Persian Gulf will reopen another 
route, and recent movements indicate that Ger- 
many aspires to this task. A third route through 
Persia or Turkestan and Afghanistan lies before the 
eyes of Russia. The iron rail is a firmer bond than 
the tracks of ships, and the old caravan routes will 
yet reassert themselves. 

When Alexander heard that Darius was awaiting 
him, he advanced directly toward him, and coming 
to the Tigris, crossed it immediately by a ford 



360 Alexander the Great. [331 B.C. 

which, to his surprise, he found unguarded. The 
place of crossing was probably near the modern 
Jesire, some eighty miles above Gaugamela, where 
the river, broadening out to a width of a thousand 
feet, offers an easy ford. After the troops had 
passed the ford there occurred an eclipse of the 
moon, which at first inspired apprehension; but 
when Aristander, the prophet, interpreted it as im- 
plying disaster to the Persians, and reported that the 
signs from the sacrifices were propitious, they moved 
forward. This eclipse occurred, as the calculations 
of modern astronomers have shown, on the evening 
of September 20, 331 B.C. Alexander must have 
spent, therefore, nearly two months in Mesopotamia. 
The direct distance between Thapsacus and Gauga- 
mela would have been no more than 250 miles. 

The army of Darius had been brought together of 
the most various elements composing his vast em- 
pire. The remotest nations and tribes had furnished 
their contingents — Scythia, Bactria, and Sogdiana, 
Arachosia, Arabia, and Armenia. For a year the 
host had been assembling. By constant drill and 
careful organisation it had been brought to a grade 
of effectiveness supposed far to surpass that of the 
mass which met Alexander at Issus. Its numbers 
the cautious Arrian puts at one million infantry and 
forty thousand cavalry. The scythe-bearing chari- 
ots, a peculiar Persian institution, of which one nat- 
urally hears nothing at Issus, were here brought 
into play to the number of two hundred. They 
consisted of the ordinary two-wheeled battle-chariot, 
equipped with long sword-blades extending from the 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 361 

axle-ends, generally with a cant toward the ground, 
also from the body of the axle toward the ground. 
Sometimes these blades were also attached to the 
pole and to the body of the chariot. The appre- 
hension which this mechanism caused in advance 
among the opposing troops seems not to have been 
justified by the result. Darius, taught by the ex- 
perience of Issus, had carefully selected a place level 
and wide enough to give his army free play. Where 
the ground was uneven he had, for the benefit of the 
chariots and the cavalry, levelled it out ; in fact, he 
had prepared a graded battle-field. 

Alexander advanced with great caution to meet 
him. There was nothing of the reckless dash which 
characterised the approach to Granicus. He was 
now in the heart of the enemy's country, hemmed 
in by river and mountains, in the face of a vast 
and well-organised army encamped on a battle-field 
selected for its own advantage. Everything was 
staked on the issue of this single conflict. On the 
morning of September 21st he broke camp and 
advanced, keeping the river on his right and the 
mountains on his left. On the fourth day, the 24th, 
his scouts reported the appearance of hostile cavalry 
in the distance on the plain. It proved to be a 
body of about a thousand horsemen, who quickly 
fled when attacked. From the prisoners taken it was 
learned that Darius was near by. Alexander, for the 
purpose of resting his army, made a fortified camp, 
and remained quietly there four days. On the 29th 
the preparation for advance was again begun, and in 
the middle of the night the army, leaving behind in 



362 Alexander the Great. [331 b.c. 

the camp all the baggage and the non-combatants, 
advanced, expecting to join battle at daybreak. 

On their approach the Persians assumed battle 
array. The Macedonians, climbing a low range of 
hills, suddenly came in sight of the vast host filling 
the plain before them, less than four miles away. 
They were just beginning to descend the hills; a 
short hour more, and the great battle would be on. 
Suddenly the order was given to halt. A council 
of war was called. Should they attack immediately? 
The battle ardour was already awake with the sight 
of the foe, and many said yes; but Parmenion and 
the cooler heads thought it best to reconnoitre. It 
was untried ground. Who knew if concealed ditches 
and stakes had not been set to hinder and entrap the 
advance ? Was it wise to attack without studying 
the disposition and arrangement of the enemy's 
line ? Parmenion's view prevailed. 

The army encamped in order of battle. Alexan- 
der, with a body of light infantry and the hetairoi, 
set out to reconnoitre the field. So the forenoon 
passed along. Alexander returned and called 
another council. Careful instructions were given to 
all the officers. Each was to carry a word of ex- 
hortation to his command. The Persian army all 
this time remained under arms, in nervous expect- 
ation of an immediate attack. The afternoon wore 
away. Still no order to advance was given. Dinner- 
time came, and after dinner the men were sent to 
rest. The night of the 30th of September drew on. 
Still the Persians remained mistrustfully at their 
arms in the plain below. 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 363 

It is a striking picture, brilliant in contrasts, which 
Plutarch gives us in his account of the night and its 
scene: the quiet and dark of the camp on the hill, 
offset against the hum and glare from the plain ; on 
the one side, Parmenion and the staff, from their 
sombre outlook surveying the world of fact about 
them ; on the other, Alexander by the altar-fire 
before his tent, seeking communion with the inner 
world of mystery. 

11 On the eleventh night after the eclipse of the moon, 
which occurred in the month of Boedromion, and about 
the beginning of the mysteries-fete at Athens, the two 
armies lay in full sight of each other. Darius, with his 
troops under arms, was passing about among the lines 
and holding review by the light of torches; Alexander, 
his Macedonians asleep, was busied, out before his tent, 
in performing, with the help of Aristander, the diviner, 
certain mysterious rites, and in sacrificing to the god 
Fear. Meanwhile, the King's staff, and especially Par- 
menion, when they beheld the whole plain between 
Niphates and the Gordyaean mountains all agleam with 
the lights and fires which were made by the barbarians, 
and heard the confused, indistinguishable sound of 
voices and the noise arising out of the camp like the 
distant roar of a vast ocean, were overwhelmed with 
amazement at the thought of such a multitude, and ex- 
pressed among themselves the opinion that it would be a 
most serious and hazardous venture for them to engage 
battle with so vast an army in open daylight. They 
therefore waited on the King when he came from sacri- 
ficing, and besought him to attack the enemy by night, 
and so conceal with the cover of darkness the fearful 



364 Alexander the Great. [331 b.c. 

peril of the coming battle. To this he gave them the 
memorable answer: ' I steal no victory.' " 

In this Parmenion spoke the professional, Alexan- 
der still the amateur. Battle was to the latter still 
a form of sport, and there were rules to the game, 
and a standard of sportsmanship to be observed. 
And yet, as Arrian estimates, his decision was also 
based on proper calculation of advantage. He was 
unwilling to take the chance of such accidents as 
would be incident to a night attack. He had con- 
fidence in his own military superiority, and he pre- 
ferred a regular game accurately played. 

One result of his continued delay was that his 
soldiers gained the night's rest, while the Persians 
entered the battle, the next morning, wearied by a 
night's watching and worrying. If the battle had 
been ordered on the morning of the 30th, when the 
troops first arrived on the scene, the conditions 
would have been the reverse. The Macedonians 
had been marching half the previous night. 

Late at night, after the generals had left him, 
Alexander 

" lay down in his tent, and slept the rest of the night 
more soundly than was his wont, to the great astonish- 
ment of the generals who came to his tent at dawn, and 
were obliged to take upon themselves the unusual re- 
sponsibility of ordering the troops to breakfast. At last, 
when the time was pressing, Parmenion went to his bed- 
side, and called him twice or thrice by name till he 
awakened him. Then Parmenion asked him what was 
the matter with him, that he should sleep the sleep of a 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 365 

victor, rather than that of a man who had before him the 
mightiest battle ever fought. With a hearty laugh, 
Alexander replied: ' What! Does n't it seem to you as 
if we had already conquered, now that we are at last re- 
lieved of the trouble of wandering around in a wide, 
waste country, hunting for the battle-shy Darius ? ' " 

On the morning of October 1 (331 B.C.) the two 
armies stood arrayed against each other. The 
Macedonian force numbered about forty thousand 
infantry and seven thousand cavalry. It sufficed 
only to oppose the centre of the enemy's line. Far 
out beyond either wing, ominously menacing the 
flanks, this line extended. Not by force of num- 
bers, however, nor by weight of masses was this battle 
to be won, but by disposition of troops and direction 
of the thrust. The full, accurate, and perfectly in- 
telligible account which has survived to us makes it 
possible to appreciate distinctly the reason for the 
result. The splendid tactics of the battle of Gaug- 
amela, even if nothing else were known of him, 
would mark Alexander as a master of military 
science. 

To protect his line from being surrounded, Alex- 
ander set a reserve column in rear of each flank, so 
that by facing about it could meet an attack on the 
flank or rear. He prepared as usual to open his at- 
tack by a charge of the picked cavalry, the hetairoi, 
against the left of the enemy's centre. The ques- 
tion was one of finding precisely the point to strike, 
and he watched his opportunity with the eye of a 
hawk until the point developed. He began by a 
sidewise movement of his line to the right. The 



366 Alexander the Great. [331 B.C. 

Persians followed suit, shifting toward the left and 
keeping their left wing still far beyond his right. 
Soon the movement threatened to bring the Persian 
line beyond the ground which had been specially 
levelled for the chariots, and Darius, to check it, 
opened the battle by sending his Scythian and 
Bactrian cavalry around the Macedonian right wing 
for a flank attack. The detachment of Greek cavalry 
sent to meet them was at first repulsed, but others 
came to their aid, and after a sharp engagement, in 
which Alexander's men lost heavily, the enemy 
was held in check. Meanwhile the scythe-bearing 
chariots had come on at a gallop against the phalanx 
in the centre. This was intended to break up the 
solid mass of the phalanx, but the attempt proved a 
failure. Many of the chariot-horses were disabled 
by javelins, many were caught by the reins, and 
their drivers killed with the sword before ever they 
reached the phalanx line; such as escaped passed 
through the lines of the phalanx, which, in well- 
disciplined response to previous orders, opened to 
receive them, and then quickly closed again. 

The shifting of the Persian line to the left had 
opened a gap in their front. Alexander saw his 
opportunity at a glance. Massing his attacking 
force, a part of the phalanx, headed by the hetairoi 
cavalry, by a quick manoeuvre, into a flying wedge, 
he turned sharply with an oblique movement to the 
left, smote at the opening, and burst into the midst 
of the very centre of the host, straight toward the 
spot where the Shah was posted. It was sudden 
and relentless as a bolt from the clouds. Nothing 



331 B.C.] Battle of Gaugamela. 367 

could withstand, as nothing ever had withstood, the 
furious onslaught of this matchless cavalry squadron, 
backed by the long pikes and solid front of the 
phalanx. The Shah, whose charioteer was pierced 
by a spear, turned and fled for his life. The first 
rank reeled back upon the second, which in the sud- 
den panic gave it no support, but was instantly in 
confusion and directly in flight. The whole centre 
and the left, struck by the cavalry of the right wing, 
melted away. 

Meanwhile the Parthian, Indian, and Persian 
cavalry of the Persian right had burst through the 
opening in the Macedonian line made by Alexander's 
sudden attack, and cutting his left wing entirely off 
from the army, burst through upon the camp be- 
hind. The left was now entirely surrounded, and, 
under the furious attack of Mazseus, leading the 
Armenian and Cappadocian cavalry of the Persian 
right, was threatened with extermination. Parmen- 
ion sent to Alexander for aid. 

The reserve column behind the Macedonian right 
now faced about, and with a sharp attack routed the 
Parthians and Indians, driving them back through 
the gap by which they had come. As they scurried 
back, they met Alexander with his hetairoi, ad- 
vancing across the field to the aid of Parmenion on 
the left. Here arose a furious fight, the flying 
cavalrymen seeking to cut their way through to 
safety, the hetairoi stubbornly holding them in 
check. In the few moments of the struggle, sixty 
of the hetairoi lost their lives, but of the enemy 
only a few cut their way through. Meantime the 



368 Alexander the Great. [331 B.C. 

Thessalian cavalry of the left wing, second in pres- 
tige only to the hetairoi, had brought the onslaught 
of Mazaeus to a check. A few moments of stand- 
still, then came the break and turn, and before 
Alexander had reached the scene the Persian right 
had joined the rest of the vast army in furious, con- 
fused, disgraceful flight. 

Now the pursuit began. Thick clouds of dust, 
out of which came the sound of cracking whips and 
the beat of hoofs and the confused voice of fright, 
concealed the panic-stricken rout. The Macedon- 
ians plunged in, and slaughter held its carnival until 
night took pity on the vanquished. 

Alexander pressed on beyond the river Lycus, and 
halting there to give his men and horses rest, started 
again at midnight and forced his march through to 
Arbela, fifty-five miles from the battle-field, in hope 
of overtaking Darius. But the Shah had allowed 
himself no rest. The loss of time which Parmenion's 
call for help had cost had saved the Shah from cap- 
ture. He was now miles beyond reach, and the 
victor must be content, as at Issus, with the empty 
symbols, the chariot and the spear and bow. The 
Shah, accompanied by his body-guard and an escort 
of Bactrian cavalry, had fled far to the east into 
Media. His army was scattered to the four winds. 
Thousands upon thousands were captive. The slain 
no man could count. The greatest battle in the 
record of the ancient world had been fought. The 
issues of centuries had struck their balance in a day. 
The channel of history for a thousand years had 
been opened with a flying wedge. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FRUITS OF VICTORY : 
OCCUPATION OF PERSIA — DEATH OF DARIUS. 

331-330 B.C. 

LEAVING the Shah for the time being entirely 
out of account, precisely as he had after Issus, 
Alexander recrossed the Tigris and started 
directly south on his three-hundred-mile march to- 
ward Babylon. Here he was received without op- 
position, probably with genuine welcome, and, as in 
Egypt, he manifested always kindliest consideration 
for the feelings of the population. He allowed them 
to show him the wonders of their city, and gave 
orders to restore the temple of their great god, 
Belus ; he accepted the instructions of the Chaldean 
priests, and, in careful regard for their advice and 
directions, offered his worship at the altar of Belus. 
The sight of Babylon and the consciousness of what 
it meant to be its lord quickened in him the growth 
of the idea to which Tyre and Egypt had given the 
first impulse — the idea of a world, now so diverse in 
its outward expression, ultimately united in and 

369 



SJO Alexande?' the Great. [331B.C- 

through the person of him whom the course of 
events, if not the purpose of fate, was now making 
its universal lord. 

From Babylon he advanced to Susa, the capital 
proper of the Persian Empire, which, with its enor- 
mous treasure, fifty thousand talents ($65,000,000), 
fell without a blow into his hands. Still leaving 
Darius and the North-east unheeded, he pushed out 
into Persia proper, forcing his way through the 
Uxians, whom he subjugated and put under tribute, 
and scattering the army of the viceroy, Ariobarzanes, 
who ventured to oppose him. Persia now lay open 
to him. The royal cities, Persepolis and Pasargadse, 
were promptly occupied, and here again the heaped- 
up bullion of the empire revealed itself in enormous 
stores. If Curtius Rufus and Diodorus are to be 
trusted, one hundred and twenty thousand talents 
were found in the former city, and six thousand 
talents in the latter. The stories of the other treas- 
ures found in Persepolis became for aftertime the 
typical dreams of Oriental wealth and abundance. 
Jewels, furniture, rugs, utensils in the precious 
metals, enough to load ten thousand pairs of mules 
and five thousand camels, Plutarch says, were found 
at Persepolis. These objects must have come chiefly 
from the royal palace, which seems to have consti- 
tuted the principal part of the city — if indeed it was 
a city at all, in the ordinary sense. 

Before leaving Persepolis, where, according to 
Plutarch, he tarried four months (the winter season), 
Alexander caused the palace to be burned. The 
different accounts are somewhat at variance as to 






330 B.C.] The Fruits of Victory. 371 

the degree of premeditation involved. Plutarch, 
Diodorus, and Curtius Rufus tell a story which 
represents the thing as the outcome of a particular 
carousal. This is Plutarch's tale: 

11 When he was about to set forth from this place 
against Darius, he joined with his companions in a 
merry-making and drinking bout, at which their bona- 
robas were present and joined in the debauch. The 
most celebrated of them was Thais, a girl from Attica. 
She was the paramour of Ptolemy, afterward King of 
Egypt. As the license of the drinking-bout progressed, 
she was carried so far, either by way of offering Alexan- 
der a graceful compliment or of bantering him, as to ex- 
press a sentiment which, while not unworthy the spirit of 
her fatherland, was surely somewhat lofty for her own 
condition. For she said she was amply repaid for the 
toils of following the camp all over Asia that she could 
this day revel in mockery of the haughty palace of the 
Persians. But, she added, it would give her still greater 
pleasure, if, to crown the celebration, she might burn 
the house of the Xerxes who once reduced Athens to 
ashes, and might with her own hands set the fire under 
the eyes of the King; so the saying might go forth among 
men that the little woman with Alexander took sorer ven- 
geance on the Persians in behalf of Greece than all the 
great generals who fought by sea or land. 

"Her words were received with such tumults of ap- 
plause, and so earnestly seconded by the persuasions and 
zeal of the King's associates, that he was drawn into it 
himself, and leaping up from his seat with a chaplet of 
flowers on his head and a lighted torch in his hand, led 
the way, while the rest followed him in drunken rout, 
with bacchanalian cries, about the corridors of the palace. 



372 Alexander the Great. [331 B.C.- 

And when the rest of the Macedonians learned of it, they 
were delighted, and came running up with torches in 
their hands; for they hoped the burning and destruction 
of the palace was an indication that his face was turned 
homeward, and that he had no design of tarrying among 
the barbarians. ' ' * 

This story, though not mentioned by Arrian, is 
probably true ; at least, such a scene as this probably 
attended the setting of the fire ; but it is not neces- 
sary to suppose that the idea originated in the mind 
of Thais. Arrian's statement shows it was pre- 
meditated by Alexander, and discussed beforehand 
with Parmenion, who opposed it. It was planned 
and put upon the scene as a great symbolic act repre- 
senting, in the form of a revenge for Xerxes's de- 
struction of Athens, an announcement to the world 
that the empire of Persia was finally humbled and 
destroyed. This was Alexander's idea, but it ap- 
pears to have been a poor one. We are not apprised 
that the deed was attended with political gain, and 
the general sentiment must accord with Arrian's, 
who says: "Alexander does not seem to me to have 
acted on this occasion with prudence. ' ' This was 
also Alexander's opinion later. 

Though Alexander had now in possession the 
capital, the treasure, and the family of the Shah, 
and had burned his chief palace, the Shah himself 

* The princes applaud, with a furious joy, 
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy ; 
Thai's led the way 
To light him to his prey, 
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy. 

— Dryden, Feast of Alexander. 



330 B.C.] The Fruits of Victory. $73 

was still at large and the tiara erect. At Ecbatana, 
five hundred miles north of Persepolis, he had taken 
up his residence, and quietly waited there, ready to 
take advantage of any change which might arise in 
Alexander's fortunes, or, in case Alexander should 
advance against him, to avail himself of the way of 
retreat open behind him into Hyrcania or Parthia, 
that which is to-day north-eastern Persia. In prepa- 
ration for the extreme necessity, he had sent the 
women, his treasure, and other property, together 
with his covered travelling-carriages, on to the 
mountain pass called the Caspian Gates. For Darius 
to pass the Caspian Gates meant that he forsook the 
domain proper of the Persian Empire; for though 
his sway had extended over Bactria and Sogdiana, 
and in a half-recognised authority over the nomads 
of the North, still he would be a fugitive headed 
toward the uttermost frontier, and at the mercy of 
roaming Scythian tribes outside the pale of orderly 
civilisation and state. 

When the spring opened (330 B.C.), Alexander 
began his march toward Ecbatana. As long as 
there was still a shah, the conqueror's title to ex- 
clusive empire was not beyond dispute. Alexan- 
der's ambitions had grown with the months, and he 
no longer was satisfied to be the leader and unifier 
of the Greeks. There arose already before his mind 
the vision of a world-empire united in the person of 
one who was neither Greek, nor Egyptian, nor As- 
syrian, nor Persian, but a world-man, above the 
limitations of nations and blood, above the conven- 
tions of usage and religion. This ambition could be 



374 Alexander the Great. [331 B.C.- 

fulfilled only when he had the person of the Shah 
within his control. 

At first he heard the Shah was planning to give 
him battle, and proceeding cautiously, prepared for 
battle, he was after twelve days within the bounds 
of Media. The word came that the King, disap- 
pointed in his reliance upon aid from the Cadusians 
and Scythians, was preparing to flee. When but 
three days distant from Ecbatana, Alexander learned 
that the Shah, taking with him seven thousand 
talents of money and accompanied by about nine 
thousand troops, had fled the city five days before. 
The final and decisive reason for the abandonment 
of his plan of resistance was a division of counsels 
among his generals, whereby one party, headed by 
Nabarzanes, the commander of the Persian cavalry, 
and Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, insisted on a trans- 
fer of the military authority to Bessus and a with- 
drawal into Bactria, with hope of bettering their 
fortunes. The partisans of Bessus urged the hope- 
lessness of resistance, and the popularity of Bessus 
among the Bactrians and their Scythian neighbours, 
in support of their scheme; but the Shah, while 
compelled, in his helplessness, to accede to their 
plan of flight, still clung to the tiara and the name 
of king. Our knowledge of these incidents rests 
solely on the authority of Curtius Rufus, the main 
features of whose story must represent a historical 
basis, though some of the details, perhaps, are 
dreamed. After entering Ecbatana it became evi- 
dent to Alexander that conditions had assumed a 
new and final form. Darius was no longer Shah, 



330 B.C.] The Fr tuts of Victory. 375 

but a fugitive without city, army, or throne, at the 
mercy of the satraps of the North-east, and no longer 
dangerous, except as a symbol or an article of barter 
in their hands. It became now merely a task of 
rescuing him from them. 

An important step which the King took at this 
time indicates the ripening of the new status. He 
dismissed the Thessalian cavalry and the other 
Greek allies, sending them back to the sea and 
making preparations for their transportation to 
Eubcea. Each man was paid for his full time 
reckoned to the date of the arrival home, and two 
thousand talents was given for distribution among 
them all. Such as wished again to enlist were 
allowed to do so. Those who did entered upon a 
new career. The original plan of the great expedi- 
tion was completed. Now there lay before them 
the uncertainties of a venture out into the dark of 
the unknown North-east. They were no longer fol- 
lowing the standards of the Hellenic champion; 
they were attaching themselves to the personal 
cause of a leader whose schemes transcended the 
vengeance due upon Xerxes, and who no longer 
could act the simple role of a. young Achilles. 

With the burning of the royal palace at Persepolis 
the work which Alexander, five years before, at the 
Congress of Corinth, had bound himself to perform, 
was given its spectacular finale. The allies, whose 
presence in the army was a standing testimony to 
the contract and alliance framed at Corinth, were 
now dismissed in token of the completed work. 
Throughout all the campaigns up to this time it is 



376 Alexander the Great. [331 B.c._ 

to be noted that the allied infantry had been em- 
ployed only for garrison duty or reserve. The allied 
cavalry, among whom the Thessalians constituted 
the most trusty element, had served in battle, but 
under Macedonian leaders. Whether the Greek 
States had wished to furnish troops or not, it is evi- 
dent that Alexander had no great desire for them 
and probably little confidence in them. Enough 
were used to keep up the appearance of an alliance ; 
but now that the news of Antipater's victory at 
Megalopolis had come, no further solicitude for 
Greek cooperation was felt, and the guise of alliance 
could be dropped. So Greece was finally retired 
from the partnership, and henceforth sank into the 
background. It was now four years since Alexan- 
der had left Europe (in the spring of 334 B.C.), and 
he was destined never to see it again ; the remaining 
seven years of his life were to be occupied in sub- 
duing the eastern half of the Persian Empire. 
Rapidly the ties slackened that bound him to the 
West. The dream c r Vyouth melted away, but a 
new vision in larger perspective arose with ever- 
strengthening outlines in its place. The champion 
of West against East faded away in the mist, and 
the form of a world-monarch, standing above the 
various worlds of men and belonging to none, but 
moulding them all into one, emerged in its stead. 

Leaving six thousand men of the phalanx as guard 
of the treasure now assembled into Ecbatana, he 
started out on his new campaign. With him he 
took the old reliable elements of his army, the 
hetairoi cavalrymen, the archers and Agrianians, 



330 B.C.] The Fruits of Victory. 377 

the mercenary cavalry under Erigyius, and the re- 
mainder of the phalanx. Now began a series of 
rapid forced marches to the east. Men and horses 
dropped by the way in fatigue. On the eleventh 
day he was at Rhagse, near the modern capital of 
Persia, Teheran, two hundred miles from Ecbatana. 
Here he heard that the Shah had already passed the 
Caspian Gates. This was, at the rate Alexander had 
been going, only a day's march distant; but relin- 
quishing for the time the hope of overtaking him, 
Alexander gave his army five days' rest. 

Darius's little escort was evidently melting away, 
for many deserters came into the Macedonian camp, 
and rumour said that many others had betaken them- 
selves to their homes. Then setting out again, after 
passing the Caspian Gates, Alexander was met by 
Bagistanes, a Persian noble who had deserted from 
the camp of Darius, and who brought the astound- 
ing news that Darius was no longer a free man. As 
the fugitive band moved along their discouraged 
march, and every day brou^ 1 ' new despair, Bessus's 
plan grew into one of treason. Only the Greek 
mercenaries, two thousand in number, who still fol- 
lowed, faithful as the Swiss Guard, the declining 
fortunes of their employer, remained loyal, but they 
soon found themselves shut off entirely from com- 
munication with him either in his tent by night or 
in his carriage by day. Bessus and his troop rode 
close about him on the road, rather as keepers than 
guard. The suspicions of the Greeks were aroused. 
Their leader, the Phocian Patron, forced his way up 
to the carriage, and speaking in Greek, which the 



378 Alexander the Great. [331 b.c- 

Shah, but not Bessus, could understand, warned 
him of his peril, and besought him to intrust himself 
to the hands of the Greeks. Bessus, who under- 
stood the purport, though not the words, of Patron's 
proposal, hesitated no longer. At the first halt the 
Bactrians surrounded the tent of the Shah, and in 
the quiet of the night he was put in chains, to be 
carried off a prisoner into Bactria. A few of the 
Persian troops accompanied the Bactrians, but Ar- 
tabazus and his sons, who had remained true to 
Darius as long as they could aid him, now joined 
with the Greek mercenaries and pushed north into 
the shelter of neighbouring mountains. 

When the information reached Alexander, he took 
with him the hetairoi cavalrymen, the skirmish 
cavalry, and the strongest and lightest of his in- 
fantry, and without waiting even for the return of a 
foraging party, which had been sent out under 
Ccenus's command and with only two days' provi- 
sions, started on a rapid march toward the scene of 
the recent events. He marched the whole night 
and until noon of the next day; then giving his 
men a short rest, pushed on again the whole night, 
and at daybreak reached the village where the 
mutiny had taken place. Here he learned that the 
mutineers had left there several days before, taking 
Darius with them in a covered carriage; that the 
supreme command had been lodged in Bessus's 
hands by virtue of his near relationship to the Shah, 
as well as of his local rights as satrap; and that, 
furthermore, it was the purpose of Bessus and his 
men, in case Alexander pursued them, to use the 



330 B.C.] The Fruits of Victory. 379 

Shah's person in barter for their own immunity; in 
case he turned back, to raise an army and establish 
a government on their own account. 

There was no time for delay. Men and horses 
were already fatigued by the forced marches, but 
there could be no halt. It was a race for a prize 
Alexander had set his heart upon gaining. On they 
went again over hill and valley, through the night 
and on until noon. Then they came to a village 
which the party had left only the day before, but 
with the intention of travelling by night. Still they 
were twenty-four hours ahead. Alexander's troop 
was almost exhausted. Did the villagers know of 
no shorter road ? There was one, but through a 
desert country, with no water for horse or man. 
Quickly transferring five hundred selected infantry- 
men to as many horses taken from the cavalry, and 
directing the rest of the infantry to follow by the 
main road, he set off on the canter by the desert 
road. Men fell by the way, horses foundered, but 
all night long the mad chase was forced. Nearly 
fifty miles had been covered. Then in the grey 
morning light was discovered on ahead the straggling 
caravan. There was no preparation for defence. 
One glimpse of those dreaded horsemen, and then 
a wild scramble for life. The few who stayed to 
fight were cut down. Bessus and his aides had tried 
to induce the captive Shah to mount a horse and 
flee, but he stoutly refused. Then they drove their 
javelins into his body, and scurried off. 

On down the dismantled line of the caravan the 
Macedonian riders came, no more than threescore 



3 So Alexander the Great. [331 b.C- 

able to keep pace with the leader. " They rode 
over abundance of gold and silver that lay scattered 
about, and passed by chariots full of women which 
wandered here and there for want of drivers, and 
still they rode on, hoping to overtake the van of the 
flight and find Darius there " (Plutarch). But no- 
where was Darius to be found, until at last a rider, 
straggling away from the rest, found a waggon far 
away from the road, by a valley pool where the 
frightened, unguided mules had dragged it. In it 
lay the dying Shah. 

1 ' Still he asked for a little cool water to drink, and 
when he had drunk he said to Polystratus, who had 
given it to him : ' Sir, this is the bitter extremity of my 
ill fortune, to receive a benefit which I cannot repay; 
but Alexander will repay you. The gods recompense to 
Alexander the kindness he has done my mother and my 
wife and my children. I give him through you this clasp 
of the hand.' With these words he took the hand of 
Polystratus and died. When Alexander reached the 
spot, he was pained and distressed, as one could see, 
and he took off his own mantle, and laid it upon the 
body, and wrapped it around " (Plutarch). 

Thus died at fifty years of age (July, 330 B.C.), an 
honourable and kindly man, a courtly gentleman of 
the old school. He would have been a capable ad- 
ministrator in time of peace, but, to his misfortune, 
the date of his accession matched that of Alexander. 
Though he certainly lacked the aggressiveness of 
will and the daring essential to a great soldier, under 
ordinary conditions, and with the game played 






«*» 



tJ&* 



J 










15000yards 




BATTLE OF ARBELA. 

A, The preliminary actions ; B, The battle; X, Alexander's camp. The same 
letters used for Alexander's divisions, f , The scythe chariots, sent to attack his 
advance by the Persians, a, b, The Bactrian and Scythian cavalry which attacked 
his advancing right wing; C, C. Arachosians and Dahse cavalry, forming left 
wing of the Persians ; d, Persian and Indian cavalry, which broke Alexander's 
centre and separated his infantry ; e, Cappadocian cavalry, which attacked the 
Macedonian left and rear; D, The position of Darius ; F, F, F2, The successive 
fronts of the Persian army. 

It is plain from these plans that Alexander was here in imminent danger of 
defeat ; on Map B, his successive positions are marked I, II, III, showing how he 
had to wheel about to succour his defeated wing, when Darius fled. 



330 B.C.] The Fr ttits of Victory. 381 

according to the old rules, he might not have been 
discovered in his weakness, and might have passed 
for a tolerable military head ; but with the Mace- 
donians had been introduced a new art of warfare, 
with Alexander a new standard of generalship, and 
the pace was too fast for him. 

Alexander's sorrow at the sight of the lifeless 
body may have been mixed with vexation and 
chagrin that his wearisome chase had yielded so 
meagre a quarry, but when viewed in connection 
with all we know of the hero's real warmth of heart 
and resources of sympathy, we must reckon it better 
than that. The sight of one who four years before 
was undisputed monarch from the Hellespont to the 
Indus, now left to a lonely death, empireless, for- 
saken, and betrayed, was a sight worthy the pity of 
harder hearts than his. 

With all the honour due his state, Darius was 
carried to his grave. He was gathered to his 
fathers, for they buried him in Persepolis. 

11 Quae ducis Emathii fuerit dementia Poros 
Prasclarique docent funeris exsequiae." * 



* " What was the mercy of Macedonia's prince, let Porus tell, and 
the pomp of funeral rites [accorded to Darius]." — Ovid. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

IN AFGHANISTAN. 
33O-329 B.C. 

IT was in July, 330 B.C., that Darius came to his 
end. Alexander's fearful race with treachery 
and death had carried him along the borders 
of the great salt desert of Khorasan in the scorch- 
ing heat of an inland summer. The route which 
the fugitives followed had been the main highway 
from Media eastward into far Bactria. It was the 
same which leads to-day from Teheran, by way of 
Semnan, Damaghan, Shahrud, and Meshed, out of 
Persia, into the land of the Turkomans and the 
border realms of the Czar. On the right lay the 
salt steppes ; on the left rose the mountains which 
to-day mark Persia's frontier and offer a temporary 
check upon the inevitable advance of the Russian 
glacier. Close behind these mountains trails already 
the line of the Transcaspian Railway, and it cannot 
be long before a branch will find its way through the 
hills and strike across toward the Persian Gulf. 
The place where the Shah was murdered was not 
382 



330-329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 383 

far from the site of the modern Shahrud. Here join 
to-day, as they did of old, the eastern route and the 
road from Asterabad (ancient Zadracarta), fifty miles 
to the north, in the Caspian basin. An English 
officer* who visited the place in 1896 remarks upon 
its position : 

" An army stationed at Shahrud would at once com- 
mand the approaches from the sea, and at the same time 
effectually prevent any junction between forces operating 
in Khorasan and the west. It is only fifty miles from 
Asterabad to Shahrud, and with a little skilful engineer- 
ing the road could easily be made passable for artillery, 
or at any rate for light field-guns. No doubt the Rus- 
sians realise its strategic importance. The whole place 
is dominated by Russian influence." 

After allowing his soldiers a short rest at He- 
catompylus (near the present Shahrud), Alexander 
moved to the north, through the Elburz Mountains, 
into the narrow strip of country called Hyrcania, 
which skirts the southern shores of the Caspian. 

The sea, when it first came in sight, was evidently 
a surprise to him. He saw before him, as Plutarch 
says, the bay of an open sea not much smaller ap- 
parently than the Black Sea, but with somewhat 
sweeter water than in most seas. He was unable, 
however, to gain any certain information about it, 
and concluded it must be an arm of the Sea of Azov. 
Plutarch, with his superior geographical knowledge, 
implies that he might have known better, for before 

* Clive Bigham, A Ride through Western Asia, p. 193 ff. Lon- 
don, 1897. 



384 Alexander the Great. [330 b.C- 

his time scientists had already located it as the north- 
ernmost of the four great gulfs descending into the 
continent from the outer ocean. In asserting this, 
however, Plutarch is almost certainly guilty of an 
anachronism, for the common opinion of Alexander's 
day connected the Caspian as an inland sea with the 
Euxine. Not until Patrocles, in the early part of 
the next century, explored the coasts of the Caspian, 
did the mistaken theory of its connection with the 
northern ocean make its appearance. Accepted 
then by Eratosthenes, it held its place in the vul- 
gate geography until the time of Ptolemy (second 
century A.D.). Alexander's soldiers identified the 
Jaxartes with the Don (Tanai's). . 

While in Hyrcania, he subjugated the various 
tribes of mountain and plain, and received the sub- 
mission of the two satraps Phrataphernes, governor 
of Hyrcania and Parthia, and Autophradates, gov- 
ernor of Tapuria, both of whom, in accordance with 
his principle of respecting and utilising existing in- 
stitutions of government, he forthwith reinstated in 
their authority. Many others also, high officials 
and noblemen, came to offer their surrender, among 
them the fine old Artabazus, whom, in recognition 
of his rank and his loyalty to his sovereign, as well 
as for old acquaintance' sake, he treated with dis- 
tinguished consideration, and attached to his per- 
sonal staff of aides and advisers. This Artabazus, 
through long experience, as general, governor, and 
rebel, in the affairs of Asia Minor, as well as a seven 
years' (352-345 B.C.) residence as a political fugitive 
at Philip's court in Pella, had made himself familiar 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 385 

with Western ideas, and was a cosmopolitan far be- 
yond the measure of the ordinary Persian grandee. 

There came also to surrender themselves fifteen 
hundred Greek mercenaries, last vanishing remnant 
of the Greek contingent in Darius's army. In re- 
ceiving their submission Alexander saw fit to make 
a distinction — and it is worthy of note that he did — 
between those who had enlisted in the service of the 
Shah before the Congress of Corinth (336 B.C.) had 
proclaimed the Greek war against Persia, and those 
who, in quasi-disloyalty, had enlisted later. The 
former were discharged free, the latter compelled to 
reenlist. With the mercenaries were found a num- 
ber of sadly stranded Greek ambassadors, who, for 
some reason or other, had been in attendance at 
Darius's court at this most untimely season. One 
who had come from Chalcedon and a delegation from 
Sinope were set free; they might be considered out- 
side the pale of responsibility ; but the five Spartan 
ambassadors, who furnished in their presence one 
last testimonial to the incorrigible stubbornness of 
their little State, were kept in duress. 

From Asterabad, where, after the work was over, 

Alexander had given his army a fortnight's rest and 

the delectation of a fete with the usual games, he 

returned (early autumn of 330 B.C.) into Parthia, 

and passed thence along the Bactrian road eastward 

until he came to Susia, a city of Aria, near the site 

of the modern Meshed, at the extreme north-eastern 

frontier of modern Persia. Meshed, only fifty miles 

from the present line of the Transcaspian Railway, 

stands near the junction of the Persian, Afghan, and 
25 



386 Alexander the Great. [330 B.C.- 

Russian frontiers, and hard by the gate which Rus- 
sia must choose in entering Afghanistan as a vesti- 
bule to India. At Susia the satrap Satibarzanes 
submitted to him, and rejoiced to be confirmed in 
the government of his province. News of Bessus's 
activity in the East soon, however, caused the new 
convert to backslide, and Alexander, who was al- 
ready on his way toward Bactra, Bessus's capital, 
turning sharply to the south, and in two days' 
marches pushing through the seventy miles that 
separated him from the rebel's stronghold at Herat 
(Artacoana), proceeded to cleanse the land of every 
vestige of opposition, and then to place a trustier 
man, Arsames the Persian, in the governorship of 
the land. Satibarzanes had meanwhile fled to join 
Bessus at Bactra (modern Balkh). At the foot of 
Artacoana's citadel arose later one of Alexander's 
famous Greek cities of the East, Alexandria- Areion, 
which survives to-day as Herat, for two centuries 
past the apple of discord between Persia and Afgh- 
anistan. It stands where the ways part, the great 
eastern road by the Heri-Rud valley across Afghan- 
istan to the east, and the route which the caravan 
trade from the remotest antiquity to the present 
time has always followed from northern Persia and 
the Caspian, by way of Herat, Kandahar, Ghasni, 
and Kabul, on into India. This is the route that 
all the great conquerors have trod whose hosts have 
entered the gate of India — Mahmud the Great 
(1001 A.D.), Genghis Khan (thirteenth century) and 
Tamerlane (1398) the Mongols, Nadir Shah the Per- 
sian (1737), Alexander the Macedonian. It is the 



329^ B.C.] In Afghanistan. 387 

well-known " Key of India," and when Afghanistan 
passes under Russian control, it will be still better 
known. 

The revolt of Satibarzanes had determined Alex- 
ander to secure this important route and the country 
adjacent to it, the present western and southern 
Afghanistan, before penetrating to Bessus's lair at 
Bactra (Balkh) in northern Afghanistan. So con- 
tinuing his march southward from Herat, he entered 
the province of Drangiana, the district about the 
great Hamun swamps (Palus Aria). 

Here, probably at its capital city, Phrada (Proph- 
thasia), came to light an ominous conspiracy in the 
very heart of his own camp. No less a person was 
involved than Philotas, the commander of the famous 
companion cavalry, and son of Parmenion, the com- 
mander-in-chief ; and the sudden emergence of the 
trouble just at this time seems to be connected with 
a change in Alexander's relation to his men and to 
his mission that was now beginning to be felt, and 
perhaps with a change in the bearing of Alexander 
himself. The occurrence has received much atten- 
tion from modern * as well as ancient historians, and 
a fair and correct understanding of its significance is 
important for an estimate of the conqueror's whole 
mind and attitude at this determining period of his 
career. 

Parmenion, now seventy years of age, had been 



* The most recent and the fullest discussion of the subject is found 
in an article by Friedrich Cauer, " Philotas, Kleitos, Kallisthenes," 
Jahrbucher fur Class. Philol., Supplement-Band XX. (1894), pp. 
1-79. 



388 Alexander the Great. [330 B.c- 

from the start the most faithful reliance of the 
young conqueror. It was he who had assured him 
the loyalty of the army in Asia on his father's death, 
who had among all his generals favoured most un- 
reservedly the plan of Asiatic conquest, and who, 
through all the hardships, difficulties, and triumphs 
of the four years past, had been his nearest adviser 
and most important military aide. His apparent 
lack of energy in the battle of Gaugamela, and his 
premature call for reinforcement which had so un- 
fortunately diverted Alexander from the pursuit, 
had left an unpleasant impression upon the young 
King's mind. Perhaps it was through weariness of 
his conservatism or suspicion of his senility that he 
had been left behind now in command of the garri- 
son at Ecbatana. 

His influence had always been great among the 
Macedonian soldiery. He had originally had three 
sons in the army, two of whom had lost their lives 
in service. One of them, Nicanor, had held the 
important post of commander of the hypaspists ; 
another was Philotas, in a like or even more import- 
ant command. His son-in-law Ccenus and his 
brother Agathon were also in important commands. 
Many of his kinsfolk held minor positions in the 
army. This group formed an easy nucleus about 
which should shape itself into expression the rising 
discontent with the new order of things. There 
was uneasiness abroad in the Macedonian camp. 
The older men were beginning to feel that the Alex- 
ander with whom they had left Europe was gradu- 
ally drifting away from them. He had begun to 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 389 

show a liking for Oriental manners that was not to 
their mind. The talk about his assumption of di- 
vinity had not been met with favour by them when 
it first cropped up nearly two years before in Egypt. 
Little had been heard of it since then, but since 
Darius's death there had been a growing tendency 
to assume the court manners of an Oriental despot. 
He had not yet, as he did a year or two later, gone 
so far as to exact of his Macedonians the Oriental 
etiquette of prostration in his presence, but even 
the acceptance of it constantly from the Orientals 
themselves was not a good omen for the future. 
Then, too, Persian noblemen, like Artabazus, were 
being admitted to his court and confidences in in- 
creasing numbers. Persian satraps were being re- 
stored to the control of rich provinces, and native 
officials of lower grade retained in authority. What 
wonder if the old Macedonians who had borne the 
toil of war saw in all this only the victor robbed of 
his spoils! 

Alexander had also begun, at least on state occa- 
sions, to assume the Oriental dress, not in its ex- 
treme form, tiara and all, to be sure, but with a 
compromise between the Median and Macedonian 
styles. Plutarch * speaks about it thus : 

M From here [Hyrcania] he marched into Parthia, and, 
as he had not much to do here, first put on the Median 
dress, probably with a desire to accommodate himself to 
the usages of the country, in recognition of the influence 
which conformity to the usual dress and costume has in 

♦Plutarch, Alexander, xlv. 



390 Alexander the Great. [330 B.c- 

the work of civilising a people; or perhaps it may have 
been a way of insinuating upon the Macedonians the 
usage of prostration through accustoming them to tolerate 
this change in the conduct of life. He did not, however, 
assume the ultra-Oriental style of dress, with all its odious 
barbarian features, the trousers, the sleeved jacket, or 
the tiara, but a compromise between the Persian and 
the Macedonian, more quiet than the former, but yet 
more imposing than the latter. At first he wore this 
only when meeting barbarians or with his friends at 
home, but later he appeared in it publicly, when he 
drove out, and at public audiences — a sight which caused 
the Macedonians much pain." 

We should not, from what we know of national 
prejudices even in the present enlightened days, ex- 
pect to find charitable judges of Alexander's grow- 
ing cosmopolitanism among the hardy warriors of 
homely Macedonia. His great idea of a cosmopoli- 
tanism expressed in a world-empire, and created by 
the breaking down of barriers, so that each part 
might contribute of its own, was just beginning to 
intrench itself in his mind, at the expense of the old 
idea of exploiting the East for the good of the West, 
and must be his excuse to those who give him char- 
itable judgment. All know, however, who have 
observed individual specimens of humanity under- 
going the process of cosmopolitanising, with how 
great risk to character it makes its way, and how 
frequently it is itself an evidence of loss of anchorage 
and of moral decay 

Parmenion and his kin were evidently patrons of 
the old school. Rumours had reached the ears of 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 391 

the King, two years before, of things Philotas, in 
unguarded moments, had said which involved critic- 
ism of the King. Through Philotas's mistress, a 
fair woman of Pydna who had been taken among 
the captives at Issus, word had come that one day 
in his cups Philotas had boasted that all the great 
deeds were really those of his father and himself, 
though the benefit of them, kingship and all, ac- 
crued to Alexander alone. The King had appar- 
ently forgotten it, but still he watched Philotas. 

This was the state of things when in the late 
autumn of 330 B.C., at Phrada, in Drangiana, word 
suddenly came of a plot. A young man named 
Nicomachus had been incited by a friend, one Dim- 
nus, to join in a conspiracy planned against the life 
of the King. He, through his brother, had sent 
word of the danger to Philotas, who had failed to 
carry it to the King, though in constant communi- 
cation with him. Two days elapsed, when the 
matter was by another route reported to the King. 
This brought Philotas under suspicion ; and others, 
influenced to some extent by prejudice against him, 
now appeared with positive accusations. He was 
immediately put under arrest, and, i«n old-fashioned 
style, put on trial before the army, with the King as 
his accuser. 

We have no way of estimating the evidence. The 
method of procedure was certainly not such as to 
guarantee the dispassionate hearing worthy of a 
court. Philotas had gained many private enemies 
by his overbearing manner and his tendency to in- 
dulge in luxury and ostentation. Even his father 



392 Alexander the Great. [330 B.c- 

had once rebuked him: " My son, to be not quite 
so great would be better." Whatever the proofs 
were, the army-court declared him a would-be regi- 
cide, and clamoured for his execution. In judging 
of the probable justice of this verdict, it is to be 
noted that another general, Amyntas, who was ac- 
cused of complicity in the same conspiracy, was by 
the same tribunal acquitted. Arrian says Philotas 
was convicted by clear proofs. The presumption is 
that he was guilty. There is nothing inherently 
improbable in the belief. It was always the fate of 
autocrats to be conspired against by those nearest 
them. 

Still Alexander was not absolutely satisfied. Phi- 
lotas had insisted on his innocence, and excused his 
failure to report the alleged conspiracy by saying 
that he had discredited the report of its existence. 
He was therefore subjected to torture, in the hope 
of extorting a confession. The torture was admin- 
istered in private by Hephaestion, Craterus, and 
Ccenus, the three most intimate associates of the 
King; and Alexander himself, in order to take per- 
sonal cognisance of every detail, was close at hand, 
hidden by a curtain. When Philotas, under stress 
of torture, showed an unexpected lack of fortitude 
for a tried soldier, Alexander is reported to have 
said from his place of concealment: " What, Philo- 
tas, sensitive and craven as that, and yet engaged 
in a design like this ? " He is said at last to have 
confessed and to have implicated his father — this, 
however, on the authority of Curtius Rufus only. 
He was then put to death, and trusty messengers 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 393 

were sent swiftly across to Ecbatanato order the as- 
sassination of his father also, which was forthwith 
accomplished by the hands of his officers. This 
was a high-handed and outrageous act. It seems 
impossible that Parmenion could have been guilty, 
but the mere fact that the King could have thought 
it necessary showed how sensitive he had become to 
the possibility of an opposition centring about the 
family of Parmenion. 

The command of the companion cavalry, formerly 
held by Philotas, was now divided between Clitus, 
the son of Dropides, and Hephaestion, the latter of 
whom had of late advanced rapidly in the esteem of 
Alexander. It is remarked, for instance, that he 
among all the Macedonians showed most sympathy 
for the new ideas of the King. It was a period of 
transition in Alexander's life, and the friendship 
of Hephaestion marks the new period. 

It is evident that Alexander could have spent but 
little time in Drangiana. Late * in October or early 
in November he advanced through the country of 
the peaceable and hospitable Ariaspians dwelling 
along the lower courses of the Hilmend, on the 
western frontiers of the modern Afghanistan, and 
thence turned his line of march toward distant Bac- 
tria, where Bessus was still maintaining the emblems 
of authority of the old Persian Empire. The route 
chosen led up the valley of the Etymandrus (Hil- 
mend) toward Ghasni, then down into the Kabul 



* Hogarth's attempt {Philip and Alexander, Appendix B) to revise 
the chronology of this period fails of satisfying Arrian's account of 
later movements in Sogdiana. 



394 Alexander the Great. [330 B.C.- 

basin, and thence northward over the passes of Paro- 
pamisus (the modern Hindu Kush). Opposition 
faced him at every turn, but he fought his way 
rapidly through to the foot of the Paropamisus. 

At two points at least on the route he founded 
colonies, probably marked by the modern sites of 
Kandahar and Ghasni, and near his halting-place at 
the foot of the mountains a third, not far from the 
modern Kabul. Once during the year word came 
of trouble in the outer world. An army from Bac- 
tria had invaded Aria and was seeking to detach the 
district from its allegiance. Not to be himself 
diverted from his projects, Alexander sent a strong 
force under Artabazus the Persian, which not with- 
out difficulty accomplished the defeat of the intrud- 
ers. Alexander's way up the Etymandrus valley 
led at times through deep snow, and bitter priva- 
tions were suffered. The winter was coming on, 
and when he reached the foot of the mountains by 
Kabul it must have been late in December (330 B.C.). 

With the opening of spring (329 B.C.) he crossed 
the passes of the Hindu Kush at an elevation of 
over thirteen thousand feet, and came to the city 
of Drapsaca in Bactria. After a little rest he pushed 
on in pursuit of Bessus, who gradually retired before 
him, and crossed the Oxus (Amu-Darja) into the ter- 
ritory of the modern Bokhara. The Oxus, which 
now flows into the Sea of Aral, was in Alexander's 
time, and even down to as recent a period as the 
sixteenth century, a tributary of the Caspian. If a 
plan recently proposed by Russian engineers of re- 
storing it to its ancient course should be realised, it 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan, 395 

will provide a waterway from the Caspian into 
north-eastern Afghanistan, direct toward the gate of 
India. When Alexander came to. the Oxus he 
found it a mighty stream swollen with the melting 
snows; and in default of boats, or wood with which 
to build them, he sent his men across on " life- 
preservers " improvised out of their leather tent- 
coverings stuffed with straw. Five days were 
expended in the crossing. Hounding Bessus down, 
he finally found him with a few soldiers in a fortified 
village, forsaken and betrayed by his generals and 
his army. Now Darius could be avenged. Strip- 
ped naked, with his neck in a heavy wooden yoke, 
Bessus was made to stand by the roadside while the 
army marched by. When Alexander came up to 
where the wretched man was placed, he caused his 
chariot to halt, and asked him why he had betrayed 
his King, who was his kinsman and benefactor. He 
answered that he had not done it alone ; others had 
planned it with him, and they had done it in hope 
of winning Alexander's favour. The King showed 
his appreciation of the answer by ordering him 
scourged and sending him in chains to Bactra 
(Balkh), his capital, whence, in the following winter, 
he was brought to Zariaspa (Charjui), and there, by 
a court of his peers, condemned in due and proper 
Median form to suffer the death of a regicide. 
They cut off his ears and nose, and sent him to 
Ecbatana to be put to death by the native author- 
ities. So, though Greek and Macedonian shuddered 
at the horror of mutilation, the lord of the East was 
avenged by the East, and in genuine Eastern style. 



39° Alexander the Great. [330 B.C.- 

Arrian,* in passing, cannot restrain his Hellenic 
instincts from volunteering the remark: " I do not 
approve of this harsh punishment of Bessus; nay, 
rather, I regard the mutilation of the body as a 
barbarian trick, and agree that Alexander was led 
into imitation of the ways of the rich Medo-Persians, 
and especially of the way, characteristic of their 
kings, of treating their subjects as inferior beings." 
But the larger significance of the event he does not 
note. Viewed as an act of political prudence, it left 
the East to bear the burden of the Shah's death, 
and cleansed the hands of Alexander. Viewed on 
still larger perspective, it presented a first glimmer- 
ing of that idea of empire and law which was gaining 
hold upon the mind of Alexander, whereby peoples 
were to find the rule and order of life in the beaten 
track of their own usage and faith, and empire, 
wrought out from within rather than imposed from 
without, was to be more a thing of levelling the 
barriers of distrust and misunderstanding than of 
impressing a foreign will and sway. 

The complete conquest of Bactria and its adjoin- 
ing country, Sogdiana, Bokhara, and southern 
Turkestan, was to Alexander a necessary condition 
of assured peace. Here was the very centre of the 
Persian religion, the scene of Zoroaster's teachings. 
The valleys of the Oxus and of the Jaxartes evi- 
dently formed then the seat of a strong, well- 
developed civilisation that had been able to assert 
itself against the nomadic tribes of the western 
desert and against the Scythians of the north, and 

* Arrian, Anabasis, iv., 7. 



329 B.C.] In Afghanistan. 397 

supported a population, we have reason to believe, 
considerably denser and more settled than that of 
to-day. Here Alexander found the sturdiest oppo- 
sition he had met with since entering Asia. The 
people he was dealing with were of the Aryan stock 
pure and undefiled, and uncontaminated by the re- 
finements which had their seat in the old settled life 
of Mesopotamia. Evidence enough of the difficult- 
ies encountered is found in the fact that over two 
years (April, 329 B.C., to May, 327 B.C.) were oc- 
cupied in reducing to complete submission a district 
three hundred and fifty miles square, while in a 
single year (July, 331 B.C., to July, 330 B.C.) he had 
overrun Syria, Assyria, Persia, Media, and Parthia, 
a domain one thousand miles in width. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

IN BOKHARA AND TURKESTAN. 
329-327 B.C. 

AFTER the capture of Bessus Alexander tarried 
in the rich plains of the Oxus long enough 
to rest his army and to replenish his supply 
of horses, which had suffered terribly in passing the 
mountains, and then pushed rapidly across Sogdiana 
to the north-east, and occupied its chief city, Mara- 
canda (modern Samarkand). Since crossing the Oxus 
he had been upon soil which to-day is under Russian 
protection, or is Russian outright. Samarkand, the 
most important ancient city of the Transcaspian 
region, and the city where Tamerlane received his 
crown, is now an important station of the Trans- 
caspian Railway, and represents in its schools of 
theology the strong fortress of Mohammedan 
orthodoxy. It is the " head of Islam, as Mecca 
is its heart." From here Alexander pushed on a 
hundred miles and more farther to the banks of the 
Jaxart.es (modern Syr-Darja) at the modern Kho- 
jend. Suddenly the flame of revolt burst out in his 

398 



329-327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 399 

rear. The whole frontier was ablaze with defiant 
opposition. The last remnants of the Persian 
power, under leadership of Spitamenes, joined with 
the frontier population, and the roaming tribes of 
the North arose as by concerted signal to sweep 
across the path by which he had come and to shut 
him off from the world. First he turned back 
against the seven frontier cities which, in close 
proximity to one another to the west of Khojend, 
formed the barrier against the northern steppes. 
These in quick succession he reduced to subjection. 
Then he turned back eastward to Khojend. 

A great force of Scythians (Sakai) had now gath- 
ered on the opposite bank of the river, apparently 
awaiting their opportunity to invade the country. 
Their insulting challenges hurled across the river 
dared the Macedonians to cross and find out how 
different Scythians were from the effeminate peoples 
of Asia. Alexander had hitherto had no purpose to 
carry his arms farther, but this was too much for his 
sense of sportsmanship. In order to give them a 
sample of his mettle he did just what he had done 
six years before (335 B.C.) at the Danube: he made 
a sudden passage of the river, using the same means 
as at the Oxus, drove the Scythians before him, and 
penetrated a day's march into their land, until the 
bad water of the country, which in the excessive 
heat he had drunk too rashly, came to the rescue of 
the fugitives and demonstrated the great chieftain's 
bowels to be mortal. 

On the borders of the stream he founded a city, 
the Alexandria-Eschata marked by the present site 



400 Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

of Khojend. Within twenty days its walls were 
built, and it was settled with the Macedonians who 
had become unfit for service, some of the Greek 
mercenaries, and people from the neighbourhood 
who volunteered for the new enterprise. During 
his two years' stay in the North-east at least eight 
such colonies were founded, — according to Justin, 
twelve, — and these became afterward important 
factors, as outposts of Hellenism, in assuring the 
unity of the empire and in leavening the lump. In 
no wise was Greece so effective as in the city form. 
Her civilisation was at the heart social and human, 
and urban life was its sine qua non: 

The site of Alexandria-Eschata (Khojend) was 
given its importance not only by the bend which 
the Syr-Darja makes at this point toward the north, 
but preeminently by its command of the eastern 
route into far central Asia. Hence the beaten 
track leads on through the rich province of Ferg- 
hana by Osh to the mountain-passes descending to 
Kashgar, the gate of China. All these regions are 
so deep in the heart of the continent, here at the 
" roof of the world," where to-day Russia, China, 
and India meet, that the rivers all weary of seeking 
the open sea, and die in the land. 

The Jaxartes, which Alexander seems to have sup- 
posed was the Tanais (Don), had been the recognised 
boundary of the Persian Empire, and Alexander re- 
garded it as a proper limit of his own conquests. 
His geography, as we have already seen, regarded 
the Caspian as connected directly with the Sea of 
Azov or the Euxine. Strabo, three centuries later, 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 401 

held it, in accordance with the vulgate opinion since 
Patrocles and Eratosthenes (third century B.C.), to 
be a gulf of the great northern ocean. The region 
of the Rha (Volga) was entirely left out of calcula- 
tion until the second century after Christ, when the 
river Volga duly appears in the map of Claudius 
Ptolemaeus as a tributary of the Caspian, and the 
Caspian resumes its place as an inland sea, as it had 
been treated by Herodotus. The Jaxartes was re- 
garded by Alexander as the boundary between 
Europe and Asia. A later expression of his sug- 
gests that it may have been his intention, after com- 
pleting the subjugation of Asia, to return and effect 
the conquest of the Scythians by way of the Helles- 
pont and the Black Sea; but this was no part of his 
initial purpose, which was certainly limited to a 
conquest of the Persian Empire proper. The Hindu 
Kush range, which he had crossed on entering Bac- 
tria, he believed to be the Caucasus, and this an 
extension of the Taurus range, running east and west 
directly through the centre of Asia. The southern 
half of this Asia he understood to be occupied by 
Assyria, Persia, Ariana, and India (Penjab), the lat- 
ter bounded on the west by the Indus, and consti- 
tuting on the east the south-eastern limit of the 
continent. At the Jaxartes, therefore, his conquests 
found a natural halting-place. Having seen the 
river, he retreated, but his name and memory he 
left to survive in the " tradition of the mouth " 
through the turnings and overturnings of more than 
twenty centuries. Nowhere in all the lands he con- 
quered is the direct tradition of his greatness, strange 
26 



402 Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

to say, so vivid to-day as among the mountain tribes 
about the Ferghana. Their chiefs claim still direct 
descent from Alexander, and, as a recent explorer * 
testifies, " everything great and grand they still 
couple with the name of Alexander." 

From the Jaxartes he turned back now to quell 
the insurrection that still prospered in his rear. At 
Samarkand his garrison had been beleaguered in the 
citadel. A detachment of his army sent on in ad- 
vance had been sadly defeated. He came on, an 
avenging storm, drove Spitamenes, rebels, and raid- 
ers fugitive into the far steppes of the North, and 
then turned back to waste with fearful fury the whole 
pleasant valley of the Sogd. More than a hundred 
thousand lives were sacrificed in expiation of the re- 
volt. Then there was quiet. This ended the year's 
work. It was already the depth of winter, and he 
returned to winter quarters in Zariaspa, the site of 
the modern Charjui, where the Transcaspian railway 
now crosses the Oxus (Amu-Darja). 

The year 328 B.C. was spent again in Bokhara, 
where persistent hostility still asserted itself at 
many points. The mountains were full of retreats 
where opposition found a refuge, and the sturdy, 
warlike character of the people gave Alexander the 
sorest trial he was called upon to face in all his mili- 
tary career. Bactria, too, was again in danger, and 
Craterus, who represented Alexander in his absence, 
was only after a sharp engagement successful in 
again relegating Spitamenes and his half-nomad fol- 
lowing to the wilderness of the west. Not until 

* Franz von Schwarz, Alexanders Feldziige in Turkestan, p. 97. 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 403 

later, when an attack led by Alexander was threat- 
ened, did these followers bow the knee and pay their 
tribute to the great King in the form of Spitamenes's 
head. At the end of the season Alexander returned 
again toward the boundaries of Bactria. He spent 
the most of the winter at Nautaka (Shachrisabs- 
Shaar in central Bokhara). 

During the campaign of 328 B.C. in Sogdiana 
occurred at Samarkand one of the most grievous 
misdeeds chargeable against Alexander's personal 
record — the murder of his friend Clitus. The in- 
cidents connected with it, stated and discussed fully 
as they are in all our sources, afford so clear a 
revelation of our hero's mood and inner life, and so 
complete a picture of the man off his guard, that 
they are worthy of fullest recital. 

Clitus had been the captain of the cavalry agema 
but after the death of Philotas was promoted, along 
with the new favourite Hephaestion, to the com- 
mand of half the chosen immortals, the hetairoi 
cavalry. Unlike Hephaestion, he had remained a 
stalwart Macedonian in tastes and sympathies, and 
had long regarded with apprehension and concealed 
vexation the Medo-mania of his King ; and yet he 
was a loyal friend, and all might have gone well, 
but for the madness of wine. One night, on the oc- 
casion of a festival of Dionysus, the symposium had 
been protracted to abnormal length, and the pota- 
tions had been deeper than was the wont even with 
these fervent devotees of Bacchus. In the depths 
of a Greek drinking-bout, small talk and banter were 
apt to find their common pabulum, not in politics 



404 Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

and the weather, but in the finesse of the Greek 
mythology, about which everybody knew some- 
thing, and the tantalising variations of which offered 
themes as unlikely of final settlement as either the 
tariff or determinism. This night the conversation 
turned on the problem of the paternity of Castor 
and Pollux, and the unhappy impulse of some one, 
who was at once a modernising realist and a vapid 
flatterer, brought it down to earth and turned it into 
a comparison of Alexander and the aforesaid demi- 
gods. Surely the conqueror of Asia had wrought 
greater deeds than these provisional worthies. It is 
forsooth the perversely narrow-minded people who 
see no good and great thing except in old times and 
in the Old Testament, and utterly ignore the great 
movements and great men of their own day. 

There were many seconders. Courtier zeal strove 
to outbid itself. Alexander's deeds were extolled 
as greater than the labours of the widely travelled 
Hercules. The old-fashioned Macedonians were 
shocked at the impiety, but held their peace ; only 
the impulsive Clitus raised his voice in protest. As 
the conversation, however, developed into a com- 
parison of the achievements of Philip and of Alex- 
ander, to the disparagement of the former, the issue 
between the new school and the old became still 
more sharply drawn, and when the revellers came to 
amuse themselves by singing the serio-comic verses 
of Pranichus, which chaffed the old Macedonian 
officers for their defeats in Sogdiana, the last straw 
was added to the burden. Clitus's indignant protest 
against exposing worthy veterans to ridicule as 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 405 

cowards was answered by Alexander, who had thus 
far quietly treated the whole discussion as baccha- 
nalian nonsense— and answered, it appears, with a 
jest: " Clitus seems to be pleading his own cause." 
But the jest carried a sting to the half-drunken 
advocate, and anger and wine drowned humour. 
' You ought to be the last one to name me a coward 
— you who at Granicus, fleeing from Spithridates's 
sword, owed your life to my hand. These Mace- 
donians, whom your creatures ridicule, have bought 
with their blood your fame." Alexander had thus 
far preserved his composure, but now a sensitive 
point had been touched, and he rebuked Clitus. 
Such talk, he said, served only to stir up animosities 
and sedition. But Clitus was in no mood to heed 
the injunction of silence. " Why do you ask free- 
men to dine with you at all, if you are unwilling they 
should speak their minds ? You 'd better associate 
altogether with your lickspittle Persians, who bend 
the knee to your white tunic, and say only what 
you want them to." Alexander's temper could 
tolerate an indefinite amount of mythological con- 
troversy, but this approached dangerously near to 
twitting on facts. Anger came quick and strong. 
He seized the first object that lay at his hand, hurled 
it at the offender, and reached to find his sword. 
A prudent guard had hidden it out of his sight. 
Friends gathered about seeking to soothe and re- 
strain him, but he broke from them, and shouting 
loud to his guards in his native Macedonian idiom 
— indication of return to first, savage principles — he 
bade the trumpeter blow the call, and smote him 



406 Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

with clenched fist when he hesitated to obey. 
Clitus's friends, in hope of preventing a collision, 
hurried him out of the room, and Ptolemy led him 
away out of the citadel and beyond the moat; but 
his fate and the folly of wine drew him back. In a 
moment he had entered at another side of the 
banqueting-hall, and raising the portiere that hung 
before the door, stood definantly there, chanting in 
tone of reckless challenge Euripides's verses of dis- 
content from the " Andromache " : 

" Alas, in Greece how ill things ordered are! 
When trophies rise for victories in war, 
Men count the praise not theirs who did the deed, 
But give alone to him who led the meed." 

A few words brought the import of the well- 
known passage. The apparition at the doorway 
was sudden as the challenge was insulting. Quick 
as a flash the impetuous King snatched a spear from 
the hands of a guard and hurled it at the figure by 
the raised curtain. The deed was done. The friend 
of his childhood, his life-companion and rescuer, lay 
gasping out his life. 

Quick came the rebound from the fury of anger in 
a passion of remorse. Alexander bent by the side 
of the prostrate body, drew out the fatal spear, and 
would have turned it against himself, but his com- 
panions seized him and led him away by force to his 
chamber. There he lay through the night and 
through the day, writhing in the torment of remorse 
and self-reproach. Now he would call Clitus by 
name as if to awake him from death, now implore 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 407 

his forgiveness, now chide himself as murderer of 
his friends, now call the name of his nurse Lanice, 
Clitus's sister, and, as if she were present, abuse 
himself in self-accusation before her: " How ill have 
I repaid thee, kindly foster-mother, for all thy care 
in rearing me! Thy sons thou hast given to die 
fighting in my behalf; thy brother I have slain with 
mine own hand." When the first storm of grief 
had spent itself, he lay still upon his bed, neither 
eating nor drinking, nor uttering a word. 

So for three days, until the fear spread through 
the camp that he might become demented. Men 
came to plead with him that he should face his work 
and put his grief behind him ; but he listened to 
none of them, till finally " specious platitudes of 
kismet and predestination began to soothe, and a 
sophistic Greek infused a baleful balm, reminding 
the successor of Darius that emperors stand above 
obligation and above law."* Still the deed re- 
mained a burden upon his soul, and the memory of 
it seems to have embittered the remainder of his 
life. Perhaps it added something of the hardness 
we cannot fail to note creeping in upon his temper 
during the latter years. Continuous life in the hard 
experience of war, coupled with the unnatural ex- 
citements of risk and enormous success, might well 
have been expected to show their effects in his 
character; but this incident alone cannot be made, 
prominent as it has been in the accounts of his life, 
to carry the whole argument. 

A man who aspired to rule the whole world had 

♦Hogarth, Philip and Alexander. 



408 Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

shown himself unable to rule his own temper. His 
weakness stood out in the powerful light of one 
terrible demonstration. He saw it himself and de- 
spised himself. He hardened himself against his 
shame and grew harsh. So our ideals slip away 
from us, as we discover our weakness, and paint their 
substitutes over " to resemble iron." Yet we shall 
do Alexander injustice if we attribute his unhappy 
act to a radical decadence of character, or see in 
it an indication that his relations to his men and his 
attitude as a sovereign had suffered radical change. 
He was a human being, and the incident helps to 
show how very human he was ; but still the Alexan- 
der who hurled the spear at Clitus and then bowed 
in instant repentance over the prostrate body is, on 
the whole, the same Alexander whose impulsive 
violence and impulsive generosity and love have 
all through the story of his life given an individual 
colour to a character shaped in strong lines of 
sagacity, idealism, and force. The significant thing 
is that he could still repent. Arrian says well : * 

u Alexander is the only one I know of among the kings 
of olden time who from nobility of character repented of 
the errors he had committed. The majority of men, 
even when themselves convinced they have done wrong, 
make the mistake of thinking they can conceal their sin 
by defending their action as just. But, as I look at it, 
the only cure for sin is for the sinner to confess it and 
to be visibly repentant regarding it. ' ' 

If the Clitus incident is to serve any didactic pur- 
pose beyond that of a temperance lecture, it can 

♦Arrian, Anabasis ■, vii., 28, 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 409 

only be used as a further illustration of the Mace- 
donian envy, which had two years before shown 
itself in the conspiracy of Philotas, and which still 
maintained a smouldering life behind the ashes. 
The old-fashioned Macedonians could not reconcile 
themselves to the sight of their King hobnobbing 
with Persian grandees and toying with Oriental 
fashions and manners. His reconstruction policy 
of reconciliation and amalgamation found no real 
favour in the hearts of these Stalwarts; they be- 
lieved in robuster things. Warrior-like, they re- 
sented any curtailment of the doctrine that to the 
victors belong the spoils. 

The murder of Clitus occurred at Samarkand in 
the year 328 B.C. In the following spring (327 B.C.) 
another thing occurred which furnishes further in- 
dication of the same unreconcilable spirit of stalwart- 
ism. In the train of Alexander had been since the 
beginning of his campaigns in Asia the Olynthian 
Callisthenes, nephew and pupil of Aristotle, a man 
of great personal dignity and scholarly refinement, 
and distinguished alike by his frankness of speech 
and by his skill as a writer and speaker. He was 
the literary man of the court, par excellence, and he 
had accompanied the army with the express purpose 
of recording and glorifying the great deeds of his 
sovereign. The rescued fragments of his Persica, 
which covered the period down to Darius's death, 
betray him to have been more rhetorician than 
chronicler. 

Intimate as his relations had been with Alexander, 
his brusqueness of speech, addressed not infrequently 



4io Alexander the Great. [329 B.c- 

against the new cosmopolitanism, had of late brought 
him into some disfavour. His independence of man- 
ner, too, manifesting itself now in declining invita- 
tions to social entertainments that most men eagerly 
sought, now in a churlish and disgruntled air that 
seemed to speak disapproval of all he saw, and cast 
a gloom over the company of which he was a mem- 
ber, had served to brand him as a malcontent, so 
that Alexander is said once to have mildly expressed 
his disapproval of his conduct by quoting a verse of 
Euripides: " I hate the sophist who is not sophos 
[wise] for himself: physician, heal thyself." On 
one occasion, being called upon at the King's dinner- 
table to make an extempore speech in praise of the 
Macedonians, he did it with such fervour of elo- 
quence that all rose from their seats to applaud, and 
cast their garlands upon him as a tribute. There- 
upon Alexander, with the remark that so good a 
theme makes eloquence easy, bade him test his skill 
by turning the subject about and criticising the 
Macedonians, to the end that they might know 
their faults as well as their virtues. Callisthenes 
accepted the challenge with all vigour, and pro- 
ceeded to score them with a boldness and skill that 
well-nigh provoked an outburst of disorder. He 
spared not even Philip, who, he dared to say, had 
grown great out of the discords of the Greeks — " in 
civil strife e'en villains rise to fame." His effort 
may have been an artistic success, but as a contribu- 
tion to the spread of peace and good-will among 
men it was a failure. It certainly made the author 
thoroughly disliked, and Alexander expressed the 



327 B.C.] In Bokhara and Turkestan. 411 

opinion that he had " given a sample of his ill will 
rather than of his eloquence." Of his churlishness 
there seems to have been no moral ground for doubt. 
It was Callisthenes, too, who at about this time 
provoked a " scene " at a state banquet by ostenta- 
tiously declining to perform the act of proskyncsis 
(prostration), which had been introduced as a form 
of etiquette from the Oriental usage. Stories were 
circulated, also, of the wild things he had said about 
resistance to tyrants, and defiance of arbitrary power, 
and rejection of foreign usages. Particularly among 
the young men of the court his bluntness and appar- 
ent fearlessness of speech had won him a certain 
admiration. He was suspected of having much in- 
fluence with them. Hence when a conspiracy 
against the life of the King, originating in the per- 
sonal grudge of one who had been severely pun- 
ished, was one day discovered among the pages of 
the court, suspicion turned to him. Whether there 
was any real evidence against him we shall never 
know. The chief culprit, Hermolaus, was his inti- 
mate, and openly confessed sympathy with his views. 
Despite the express statements of Aristobulus and 
Ptolemy that the pages named him as their instiga- 
tor, equally explicit statements of other authorities 
to the contrary are probably correct. He was put 
in chains, and died some months later, still a 
prisoner. This all happened at Balkh, in the spring 
of 327 B.C. The coldness which is supposed to have 
grown up between Aristotle and Alexander is com- 
monly brought into some connection with this occur- 
rence. 



412 Alexander the Great. [329B.C.- 

In the early spring of 327 B.C., Alexander had 
entered the mountain country at the extreme east 
of Sogdiana, to subdue the last relics of resistance 
which lingered still in the mountain fastnesses. The 
Bactrian chieftain Oxyartes, a former associate of 
Bessus, had withdrawn, with the families of several 
of the Bactrian nobility under his protection, into 
an extensive and well-nigh impregnable fortress 
located on the peak of a precipitous mountain-rock 
(Baisun-tau). There he sat in cool defiance and 
presumed immunity until three hundred Macedon- 
ian soldiers performed the impossible, climbed up 
the face of the almost perpendicular cliff command- 
ing the citadel, and so forced a surrender. 

Among the captives was Roxane, daughter of Ox- 
yartes, who, Curtius Rufus says, possessed "surpass- 
ing beauty and a grace of bearing rarely seen among 
barbarians. " Her beauty won a victory in the hour 
of her father's defeat — the first victory Asia had won 
over its conqueror. Thus far Alexander's breast- 
plate had proved impervious to Cupid's arrows. 
Before the storied charms of Darius's wife and 
daughters he had stood unmoved. Except for his 
intimacy with Barsine, Memnon's widow, who was 
taken captive at Damascus, he had never been 
known to pay the slightest heed to the attractions 
of women. But now it was a case of love at first 
sight, and declining to use the right of a conqueror, 
he proposed an honourable marriage. Oxyartes 
thus became his ally and friend, and through his 
mediation the remaining opposition of the country 
was rapidly conciliated. 



327 B.C.] hi Bokhara and Turkestan. 413 

This was a further decided step in the King's 
policy of conciliation and amalgamation, which, to 
the disappointment of the old-school Macedonians, 
had been steadily unfolding itself of late. They 
looked decidedly askance at the marriage, but no 
one ventured a protest. The situation was becom- 
ing too strong for them. The Oriental element, 
arrayed with the Greeks who sympathised with the 
new idea, was already powerful enough to set the 
tone, and behind him Alexander had the unflinching 
loyalty of the army. 

For the next four years we hear, strange to say, 
nothing further about Roxane. Shortly after the 
King's death (323 B.C.) she bore him a son, who be- 
came a disturbing factor for a while in the problems 
of the succession, until Cassander put him and his 
mother out of the way (311 B.C.). She plays, there- 
fore, small part in the story of Alexander, but the 
lonely record of the marriage stands to mark the 
progress of the new idea of fusing races and nations 
in a world-empire — the one idea which we are justi- 
fied as associating with Alexander's conception of 
what his conquests might be made to mean. 

Some have claimed it was his main purpose at the 
end, as at the beginning, to carry Greek sovereignty 
and Greek ideas over the East ; others have chosen 
to view his career as shaped alone by a restless, in- 
satiable greed of conquest that should bring the 
whole world beneath his arms. He surely loved 
conquest, because he loved to achieve ; he was rest- 
lessly active, because he loved to create and shape 
and do ; but the one dominant purpose toward which 



414 Alexander the Great. [329-327 B.C. 

all his achievement looked, and in which all the facts 
of his life and all his expression and action find con- 
sistent explanation, is this ideal of establishing, in 
the organised form of empire, cooperation and a 
common understanding between those two great 
elements of the civilised life of men around which, 
as spiritual nuclei, had been shaped the dualistic 
history of mankind through all the time and within 
all the horizon that he and men of his day could 
explore and know — the life of the East and the life 
of the West, orientalism and occidentalism. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE INVASION OF INDIA. 
327-326 B.C. 

TWO full years had now been occupied in effect- 
ing the subjugation of two remote north- 
eastern provinces of the Persian Empire. 
The conquest of all Assyria, Persia (proper), and 
Media had cost but one. The reason for the con- 
trast is to be found not in the difficulty of the terrain, 
or in the remoteness of the country, but in the 
people. In Bactria the Macedonian had met his Indo- 
European kin. The Medes and the Persians, who, 
as representing the forward waves of the great Iranian 
influx, had for three centuries controlled Mesopo- 
tamia, and had given their name to its empire, 
were now so thoroughly absorbed in its civilisa- 
tion that they could no longer be counted as Indo- 
Europeans. In Bactria and Sogdiana the blood 
and the spirit of the Iranians remained in uncor- 
rupted vigour. The union between Alexander and 
Roxane was therefore the joining of two streams of 
Indo-European blood. In the movement of Indo- 

415 



41 6 Alexander the Great. [327 B.C.- 

European migration and influence toward the south- 
east, from Europe into Asia, the routes by the north 
of the Caspian and by the south had met, though 
the kinship of the wayfarers betrayed itself only in 
the stubbornness with which they fought each other 
when they met. 

There remained now of the Persian Empire for the 
conqueror to traverse only the extreme southern 
portions. Next in his way lay the satrapy of India, 
directly to the south. If he should conquer this, 
descend the Indus to its mouth, and then return to 
Babylon through Gedrosia, he would have fairly 
completed the circuit of the Persian world. Since 
the days of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, a certain 
district in the northern and western part of the 
Indus basin had been a nominal dependency of the 
Persian Empire, yielding its annual tribute of 360 
talents of gold-dust, and furnishing its contingent of 
troops to the army. The host which Xerxes led 
into Greece contained, as Herodotus * reports, " In- 
dians clothed in raiment made of wood [cotton or 
bast ?], and carrying bows of bamboo and bamboo 
arrows tipped with iron." In the battle of Gaug- 
amela had appeared a force of Indians, " neighbours 
of the Bactrians," and some fifteen elephants " be- 
longing to the Indians who live this side of the 
Indus " (Arrian). 

India was still to the outer world a land of the 
unknown. Cyrus is not certainly known to have 
entered it. Darius had merely sent an army into 
the northern districts, and caused ships to be sent 

* Herodotus, vii., 65. 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 417 

(509 B.C.) down the course of the Indus to find its 
mouth and ascertain the possibility of a water-route 
around to the Red Sea. Herodotus tells all that 
we know of this expedition : 

11 Wishing to find out where the Indus, the second 
river known to produce crocodiles, empties into the sea, 
he sent an expedition of ships under charge of Scylax, of 
Caryanda [a city in Caria,] along with others upon whom 
he could rely to bring a true report. They started from 
the city of Kaspatyros [Kacyapapura] and the Paktyan 
country, and sailed down the river toward the east and 
the sunrise into the ocean, and then through the ocean 
in a westerly direction, until, in the thirtieth month, 
they came to the place where the King of Egypt had 
sent off the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa." * 

The little which Herodotus had to tell about the 
land may well have had its remote source in Scylax's 
reports. It all is vague and unreal, most of it 
dressed in the garb of the fabulous. Monster ants 
that delve in the vast sand-deserts bounding the 
land to the east bring to the surface the gold-dust 
which Persia receives in tribute. No people are 
known to live beyond them toward the sunrise. 
There are many tribes of many tongues. They are 
clothed in garments made of rushes beaten and 
plaited like a mat. They make their boats of reed, 
one joint sufficing for a boat. They kill nothing 
that has life, but live on herbs — in particular, upon 
a peculiar grain of the size of millet, in the pod, 
which they boil and eat with the pod. There are 



* Herodotus, iv., 44. 
27 



41 8 Alexander the Great. [327 B.C.- 

trees there which bear wool instead of fruit, and 
wool which excels in beauty and fineness that of 
sheep. All the birds and animals are much larger 
than in other countries, except the horses alone. 

A generation after Herodotus's time, the famous 
physician Ctesias of Croton, on his return from long 
residence in Persia, published, among other works, 
a book about India, of which we possess a summary 
made by Photius. Ctesias had never been in India, 
and his book could do no more than report what 
was commonly believed in Persia concerning this 
land of the remote and the marvellous; and that 
proves to be scanty, much of it grotesque. He has 
to tell of elephants and tigers ; apes with wonderful 
tails; birds of brilliant plumage, that speak with 
human voice in Hindu, or mayhap, if taught, in 
Greek; of men, some fair-skinned, some dark; of 
races of dwarfs and of giants; of men with tails, 
and men with heads like those of dogs; of fields rich 
beyond belief; of lakes swimming with oil pleasant 
to the taste ; of palm trees that touched the sky ; 
of reeds that grew by the river-banks as tall as the 
masts of ships, and so large that two men with their 
arms could not encircle one. Everywhere the back- 
ground of truth glimmers through the stories, but 
among the Greeks of the day they seem #0 have 
won the writer only the reputation of a ^classical 
liar. 

When Alexander, in his southward march, crossed 
the barriers of the Hindu Kush, and through the 
Kabul Valley entered the plains of the Indus, he 
passed from one world into another. The early 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 419 

history of human civilisation unfolded itself in two 
great world-areas which were virtually isolated from 
each other entirely. One, the far East, shaped its 
destiny about the two centres India and China; the 
other, the near East, created for itself two funda- 
mental civilisations in the two river valleys of the 
Euphrates and the Nile. The civilisations of Me- 
sopotamia and Egypt found their solvent in the 
Mediterranean, and the first products of the blend 
appear in the half-recognised ^Egean culture which 
we temporarily call by the name Mycenaean. The 
ingrafting upon this stock of the active element, 
European occidentalism, brought into being that 
form of Mediterranean civilisation which, first under 
the leadership of Greece, then of Rome, furnished the 
substrate of modern European civilisation. It was 
Alexander's hand that fastened the graft securely 
in place. His mission dealt only with the relation 
of European occidentalism to the orientalism of the 
nearer East. The brief incursion into north-western 
India was only an incident — a bit of side-play con- 
sequent upon the extension of Darius's Empire to 
include it. And yet, upon Alexander's temporary 
path, trodden centuries later by the missionary fury 
of Mohammedanism, came back into the near East, 
and thence into the Western world, many a bit of 
Hindu wisdom, as the fable literature, from ^Esop 
to Eberhard of Wurtemberg, for instance, may well 
attest. 

The work of establishing permanent communica- 
tion between the two major areas of human civil- 
isation — the Indo-Chinese of the far East, on the 



420 Alexander the Great. [327 B.c- 

one hand, and that of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and 
Europe, united in the Mediterranean, on the other 
— tarried for twenty centuries after Alexander's 
work was complete. It tarried till a route was 
opened by the sea, and until maritime commerce 
gave the impulse. The discovery of the route 
around the Cape of Good Hope set on foot a move- 
ment that produced the Suez Canal. 

The leadership in that European-Mediterranean 
civilisation to the creation of which Alexander gave 
the impulse passed, in the order of time, into the 
hands of powers whose strength was gathered from 
the sea; and to them, as Alexander's successors, 
was given the mission of building the bridge of ships 
between Europe and the far East. 

The route by which Alexander entered India, 
namely, the passes of the Hindu Kush and the 
Kabul valley, was, in all probability, the same by 
which, many centuries before, the ancestors of the 
Hindu Aryans had come when they separated them- 
selves from the original Indo-Iranian stock. Their 
close relationship with their Iranian brethren was 
still betrayed in unmistakable marks. Their lan- 
guages differed from each other scarcely more than 
the popular dialects of northern and southern Ger- 
many to-day, certainly not so much as Dutch and 
German. Their religions, despite the thoroughgoing 
reformation which, under Zarathushtra's (Zoro- 
aster's) name, had purified the faith of the northern 
branch, still bore the evident marks of earlier 
identity. 

The Varuna of the Vedas was the Ahuramazda of 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 421 

the Persians; Mitra corresponded to Mithra; the 
dragon-slaying (Vrtrahan) Indra to the victorious 
Verethragna; the Adam of the Hindus, Yama, the 
son of Vivasvant, who first walked the paths of 
death, was the Avestan Yima, son of Vivanhvant. 
The priests of both prepare the soma drink (Avestan 
haomd) for the sacred service, press out the sap, 
cleanse it through the sieve, and mix it with milk. 
One calls the priest hotar, the other zaotar. The 
ritual, always more conservative than the theology, 
retained the surest evidence of the common origin. 
The Aryans, immigrants, were still clearly distin- 
guishable by their fair complexion and blue eyes 
from the dark-skinned Dravidians who had formed 
the original population of the land. The Vedic 
hymns tell of the conflicts of the newcomers with 
the dark-skinned Dasyus: how Indra, " the much- 
invoked, smote Dasyus and Qimyus, as was his 
wont, hurled them with his thunderbolt to the 
earth, and won, with help of his white friends, the 
land " (Rigveda, I., 100, 18). Arrian, in his Indica 
(chap, vi.), writing on the authority of Alexander's 
contemporaries and associates, reports that 

" the Indians living toward the south are more like the 
^Ethiopians, for they are black in their faces, and their 
hair is black; but they are not so flat-nosed or so curly- 
haired as the ^Ethiopians. The Indians farther to the 
north seem to resemble in their bodies the Egyptians." 

In another connection (chap, xviii.) he says: " The 
Indians are spare in body, and tall, and much lighter 
in weight than other men." 



422 Alexander the Great. [327B.C- 

In the period which produced the Vedic hymns 
(perhaps 1 500-1 200 B.C.) the Hindu Aryans were 
still limited to the northern districts — the Indus 
basin and perhaps * the Upper Ganges valley. 
Only once is the Ganges (Ganga) mentioned in the 
Rigveda. From north to south, from the moun- 
tains to the seas, the Indus basin, covered mostly 
by the two later provinces of Punjab and Sindh, 
represents an extent of from seven hundred and fifty 
to eight hundred miles. 

In Alexander's time, however, the Aryan Hindus 
had already brought under their control the greater 
portion of northern and central India. Their medi- 
aeval period was already well under way, a thousand 
years in advance of its counterpart in Western life. 
The naive objectivism of the Vedic period, which 
plainly faced the outer world to seek of it such ma- 
terial blessings — gain, booty, offspring, victory — as 
it had to give, had yielded to the inward look. Life 
had passed to the ethico-religious basis ; a yearning 
for the supernatural had overcome that for the 
natural; Indra and Varuna had been displaced by 
Brahma; repentance and asceticism, the hermit and 
the monk, were the order of the day. Just when 
Greece, at the end of the sixth century B.C., was 
coming to its ripeness, the appearance of Buddha 
was providing for India the beginnings of a recorded 
history. 

The transfer of the central scene of Aryan life 
from the Indus to the Ganges was doubtless chiefly 

* E. W. Hopkins, " The Punjab and the Rig- Veda," in the Jour- 
nal of the American Oriental Society, xix. 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 423 

responsible for the radical changes in thought, cus- 
toms, and social organisation which separate the 
people of the Vedas from the Hindus who emerge 
upon our observation in the fourth and third cen- 
turies B.C. The conquest of a civilisation far more 
advanced than their own, at least in the outward 
forms of settled life, and the acquirement of sover- 
eignty over the vast range of territory involved, had 
led to the creation of a stronger centralised form of 
the State, to the development of the kingship out of 
the tribal chieftaincy, to the crystallisation of a sys- 
tem of castes, guaranteed by the predominant in- 
fluence of the Brahman priesthood, and finally to 
the formation of an opulent luxurious type of 
civilised life. 

The old mother-land of the Hindus, the Punjab 
district, participated, however, but secondarily in 
the great changes which reshaped the life and ex- 
perience of the Magna India of the East. The 
tribal organisation, with its government of petty 
rajas, counterparts of Homer's basilees y survived. 
The Brahmanic laws and the system of castes were 
but imperfectly recognised. Some districts had no 
Brahman priests at all. Hence the people of the 
Indus valley were looked upon by the Ganges people 
as outside the pale, and called Vratyas, or heretics. 
They ate the flesh of oxen with garlic ; they knew 
no respect for the sacred law; they confused the 
castes ; they dealt in all manner of impurity, license, 
and vulgarity ; they knew neither trade nor agricul- 
ture ; they had no knowledge of the sacred language 
of the Brahmans, the Sanskrit, but used only the 



424 Alexander the Great. [327 B.C.- 

vulgar Prakrit, its debased successor; they lived in 
perpetual war and disorder : in short, they were in 
the eyes of these new Hindus what the Macedonians 
were to the Greeks who had left them behind in 
their entrance into the Greek Peninsula — a mass of 
disgusting barbarians. Nothing is so odious to a 
new civilisation as the type it has just left behind 
and the garb it has just shuffled off. And yet the 
Hindus of the Punjab were simply old-fashioned 
Hindus, as the Macedonians were old-fashioned 
Greeks. Their preservation of the old warlike 
temper was one compensation for their failure to 
participate in the civilised progress of their kinsfolk, 
for Arrian credits them with being " the bravest 
people of all Asia in war." 

Toward the end of the spring of 327 B.C. Alexan- 
der turned his back upon the north country, and, 
with an army of over one hundred thousand men, 
set out across the passes of the Hindu Kush. Ten 
thousand foot-soldiers and thirty-five hundred cav- 
alrymen had been left in Bactria, under Amyntas's 
command. The army of thirty thousand at Issus 
and forty-five thousand at Gaugamela had grown 
during the campaigns in Turkestan to eighty thou- 
sand. Money and success had made recruiting easy 
in the West. Every man who had the spirit of ad- 
venture in his veins wished now to be with Alexander. 
During the winter of 329-328 B.C. alone reinforce- 
ments to the number of nineteen thousand, recruited 
in Greece, Macedonia, Lycia, and Syria, joined the 
army at Zariaspa. So they poured in a continuous 
stream, doubling the army, besides filling the places 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 425 

of the dead who had carried their wounds and their 
glory down into Hades, and of the disabled and 
weary who had either returned to their homes or 
been settled as colonists in the new-founded cities. 
Reinforcements continued to arrive even after the 
army had entered the Punjab, and in the last days 
before starting for the return there came five thou- 
sand Thracian horsemen and seven thousand Greeks 
and Macedonians ; so that, despite all its losses, the 
grand army set forth down the Indus one hundred 
and twenty thousand strong. In leaving the north, 
Alexander took with him also, of native troops, 
some thirty thousand Bactrians, . Sogdianians, Scy- 
thians, and Daan bowmen, all mounted on the fam- 
ous horses that Arab and Turk have since brought 
to the notice of Europe. In ten days he was across 
the mountains, back in the Kabul valley he had left 
two years before; and here he spent most of the 
summer (327 B.C.), busied in strengthening the city 
Alexandria-under-Caucasus (Charikar ?), which he 
had founded on his previous visit, and in making 
preparations for the venturesome campaign he was 
about to undertake. 

In the autumn he started on his march down the 
valley of the Kophen (the Kabul River) toward 
India. In response to his summons, several Hindu 
rajahs, and among them his friend Taxiles from be- 
yond the Indus, came to meet him, bringing pres- 
ents and the assurance of support. At a point 
about one hundred miles east of Kabul, approxi- 
mately at the site of the modern Jalalabad, he 
divided his army, sending one portion, under the 



426 Alexander the Great. [327 B.C.- 

command of Hephaestion and Perdiccas, along the 
Kophen, while he, with the other part, struck north 
up the valley of the Choaspes, the modern Khonar 
(Chitral). The force sent down the Kophen was 
intended to reduce to subjection the peoples on the 
south of the river, and especially to seize the famous 
Khyber Pass, where in modern times the Afghans 
have struggled to assert their boundaries against the 
Briton. The purpose of Alexander's detour to the 
north, on the other hand, was to subjugate the 
mountain tribes inhabiting the valleys of the streams 
tributary to the Kophen on the north, and so to 
assure control of the Chitral passes, by which an im- 
portant route led over the mountains to the head- 
waters of the Oxus, and then on to the eastern limits 
of Bactria. The Chitral valley leads directly up to 
the great Pamir plateau, on the southern edge of 
which the frontiers of the world-rivals, the Russian 
Empire and the British Empire, separated at the 
opening of this century by two thousand miles, have 
finally met and touched. Here join them, too, the 
outposts of the Chinese Empire. 

Alexander had chosen, as usual, the harder part. 
The shepherd people of the mountains gave him 
vigorous resistance. But swiftly and relentlessly he 
swept them before him, storming and sacking their 
fortified towns, and scattering them as fugitives in 
the mountains. From the country of the Aspasians 
(Acvakas), who dwelt in the valley of the Khonar, 
he passed into the Pandjkora basin, thence into the 
valley of the Swat, where the powerful tribe of the 
Assakenans, whose territory stretched across the 



326 B.C.] The Invasion of India. 42 



Indus well toward the boundaries of Kashmir, 
awaited him. Their chief city, Massaga, yielded 
only after vigorous siege. One after another, their 
cities fell, and Alexander fought his way out into 
the Indus valley. 

One peaceful incident is recorded in the midst of 
this story of hurried fight and siege and slaughter. 
Somewhere in the lower valley of the Khonar the 
invaders came upon a peaceful, sun-blessed plain, 
where grew in abundance not only the vine, but, as 
the story has it, the laurel and the ivy too. The 
appearance of the ivy, which Arrian says the Mace- 
donians had not seen for years, and which they 
welcomed with a veritable frenzy of joy, revived 
memories of old legends of Dionysus's wanderings, 
which had led him through the Orient, even to the 
bounds of India. The wild ecstasies of the f iva 
cult, which personified the power of growth and re- 
production in nature, reminded, too, of the Dionysiac 
worship. Nothing further was needed, therefore, 
to encourage men of naive philology in reading the 
value Nysaeans into the name Nishadas, which the 
people of the country bore, and in identifying their 
city as a sacred Nysa of their own Hellenic god. 
The name of the sacred mountain Meru, adjoining 
the city, they also rejoiced to recognise as Greek, 
and explain as the mountain of the thigh (Greek, 
meros), an allusion to the temporary lodgment of 
the prematurely born Dionysus in the thigh of Zeus. 
The cordial welcome of the good king Akuphis 
joined with the kindly assurances of folk-etymology 
to give the strangers for a season the sense of home, 



428 Alexander the Great. [327 B.c- 

and to make in after days the memory of this shel- 
tered vale of the Nishadas an oasis in the desert of 
their wanderings and wars. 

Through the mist of the romantic which enshrouds 
the story of this place there comes one solitary gleam 
of genial humour, a touch of nature, to assure us 
Nysa stood on solid ground. When King Akuphis, 
at his first meeting with the conqueror, had asked 
what his people might do to make the Macedonians 
their friends, he received the answer: " They shall 
make thee their governor, and send us as hostages 
one hundred of their best men." To this came the 
smiling reply: " But methinks, King, I shall rule 
better if I send you the worst and keep the best." 

Dionysus, it should be remarked in passing, was 
not the only Hellenic deity the Greeks fancied they 
identified in the Hindu pantheon. The storm-god 
Indra was for them the Zeus Hyetios, the rain-bring- 
ing Jupiter. Krishna was their own bluff, robust 
Hercules. Krishna had wrought heroic deeds, slain 
the wild bull, driven out monsters. He was always 
represented as armed with a massive club. From 
his thousands of wives he had begotten his one hun- 
dred and eighty thousand sons. Like Hercules, he 
was raised, after his death, to divine honours. 

On the fortified peak of a mountain which rose 
abruptly from the Indus's bank, an army of fugitives 
had taken its refuge. Here was a citadel that the 
boldest could not approach. Hercules himself, so 
the story went, had assaulted it in vain. It was a 
famous place, and marvellous are the accounts about 
it, so that our candid Arrian reports them all with 



3 2 6 B . c .] The Invasion of India, 429 

a cautious "it is said." Thus the height of the 
mountain is given as over six thousand feet, and its 
circuit as twenty-two miles. It was well wooded, 
had a fine spring of water at the summit, and much 
tillable land ; but on every side it was precipitously 
steep, and only one narrow path zigzagged up to its 
top. 

Its Sanskrit name may well have been Avarana, 
11 the Refuge "; but the Greeks did the best they 
could, and called it Aornos (Aornis), " the Birdless," 
forsooth because it was so high. Among the various 
attempts at modern identification, that of General 
Abbott in his Gradus ad Aomo?i> which makes it to 
be Mount Mahaban (4125 feet above the plain), 
about thirty miles above the mouth of the Kabul, 
is the most plausible. 

To Alexander the difficulty was a challenge. Se- 
lecting from his army the boldest and best, among 
them two hundred of the companions, many bow- 
men, the famous hoplite brigade of Ccenus, and the 
ever-trusty Agrianians, he advanced to the base of 
the mountain. Learning from some peasants of the 
country that there was a spur of the mountain close 
under the citadel which could serve as vantage 
ground for an attack, he accepted their offer of 
guidance, and intrusted to Ptolemy, the son of 
Lagus, the hazardous enterprise of a dash up the 
mountain to this favoured spot. It was the Ptolemy 
who was afterward to be the founder of the famous 
house of Egyptian kings, wisest and best of Alex- 
ander's captains. Under cover of the night Ptolemy 
set out, and with him the Agrianians and a few 



430 Alexander the Great. [327 b.c- 

picked men of the hypaspists and light - armed 
troops. Before morning the blaze of a beacon high 
on the mountain-side told that they were at their 
goal. They had escaped the observation of the 
enemy. Without waiting for the morning, they 
hastened to intrench themselves behind palisades 
and ditch. And it was none too soon ; for with 
daylight the enemy were upon them, and all day 
long the fight was hot about the little stockade. 
Alexander's first attempt to scale the mountain and 
bring help met with failure; but Ptolemy and his 
little band clung to their perch on the cliff till night 
came and the enemy withdrew. During the night 
Alexander succeeded in communicating with Ptol- 
emy through a deserter who knew the mountain 
path, and a plan of cooperation was arranged for 
the following day. Alexander was to try forcing 
his way, with all his men, directly up by the path 
leading to Ptolemy's position; and Ptolemy was to 
sally out against the enemy, when occupied in re- 
sisting the advance, and hold them thus between 
two fires. With the morning the struggle began. 
In the face of flying missiles, spear-thrusts, and tum- 
bling boulders, the Macedonians clambered up the 
narrow path or climbed the face of the cliffs, some- 
times man after man as on a ladder, sometimes in 
isolated groups or single venture. It was a slow, 
stubborn fight. Every foothold cost a battle. All 
day long the struggle lasted ; but, foot by foot, the 
line crept up the mountain-side, and at nightfall 
Alexander and Ptolemy joined forces on the ridge. 
The enemy's citadel occupied an isolated rock, 



326 B.C.] TJie Invasion of India. 431 

the highest peak of the mountain. Ptolemy's posi- 
tion was considerably below it, and separated by an 
interval of swamp and ravine so wide that the cata- 
pults, with from four to five hundred yards' range, 
could not reach the defenders on the walls. The 
capture of the fortress by direct assault seemed out 
of the question. Scaling the cliffs that formed the 
foundation of its walls was too hopeless a venture. 
But there were here an energy and a will that did 
not shrink from what to weaker spirits might seem 
quixotic device. The causeway at Tyre and the 
mound at Gaza must be repeated. Each soldier 
was instructed to collect a hundred wooden stakes or 
logs. Speedily swords became axes. Trees were 
felled and stripped. Soon a bridge-like causeway, 
built in cob-house construction, began to push itself 
out from the lower peak across the depression, lift- 
ing itself steadily upward toward the level of the 
fortress. Alexander was everywhere present to 
chide and cheer. The work went merrily onward. 
The first day the bridge advanced three hundred 
yards. Already it gave a standing-place from which 
the machine-guns and the slingers could beat back 
with bolts and stones the assaults of the besieged. 
Another day, and the engines began to get the 
range of the stronghold. Early on the fourth day 
the gap was closed, and the Macedonians were 
swarming upon an outjutting corner of the rocky 
peak which bore the citadel, and moving to sur- 
round and beset the walls. Then the defenders 
lost heart, and began negotiations for surrender. 
What they really hoped was to weary out the day 



432 Alexander the Great. [327-326 B.C. 

with bargaining, and then escape under cover of the 
night. Seeing this, Alexander withdrew a little 
from the walls, and offered the chance of escape. 
The offer was accepted. The moment the retreat 
began, seven hundred guardsmen scaled the walls, 
and from within and without they and others set 
upon the miserable fugitives. Many fell by the 
sword ; more were the victims panic and the preci- 
pices claimed. Awe fell upon the land in presence 
of a will before which even the mountain-tops had 
ceased to yield a refuge. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BATTLE OF THE HYDASPES. 
326 B.C. 

SOME two miles south of the point where the 
Kophen flows into the Indus, near the modern 
Attok, Alexander now joined his forces again 
with those of the Hephaestion and Perdiccas. The 
southern campaign had met with easy success, and 
all the country west of the Indus was now under 
the Macedonian control. All the strong positions 
had been left well garrisoned, and the country 
organised under provincial government as a satrapy. 
In the neighbourhood of Attok the Indus narrows 
its bed, flowing through a rocky channel which 
gives it a depth in places of from one hundred and 
fifty to two hundred feet, and a width of scarcely 
more than two hundred and fifty feet. Here on a 
bridge of boats the crossing was made, attended 
with the pomp of sacrifice and festal games. It 
was the early spring of 326 B.C. Within the strip 
of land, one hundred miles or more broad, which lay 

between the Indus and the Hydaspes (Jhilam), the 
28 

433 



434 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

strongest of the petty rajahs who held sway was Tax- 
iles, at whose suggestion Alexander had, ostensibly 
at least, first conceived the idea of an Indian cam- 
paign. The Hindu reputation for trustworthiness 
and honesty was well maintained when this prince 
came forward now to welcome the invader to his 
land. First, he sent forward to meet the King his 
presents of welcome to the land — three thousand 
animals for sacrifice, ten thousand sheep, thirty 
elephants, two hundred talents of silver, and a con- 
tingent of seven hundred Hindu horsemen. Then 
began the march toward the residential city. Its 
name from which the Greeks seem to have borrowed 
a name for its king, was in its Sanskrit form Tak- 
shacila; the Greeks called it Taxila. Its site is 
marked still by wide-spreading mounds of ruins 
near the railway that joins Hasan Abdal and Rawal 
Pindi, and eight miles from the former place. A 
few miles outside the gates, Taxiles, at the head of 
his whole army in gala array, came forth to meet 
Alexander and give him greeting, and offer himself 
and all his kingdom into his hands. The neighbouring 
rajahs and chieftains came also with presents — ivory, 
fine linen, precious stones, and treasure — to make 
their subjection. Even from far Kashmir, whose 
snow-capped mountains peered above the northern 
horizon, came an embassy to greet the conqueror. 

On the other side of the Hydaspes to the east, 
awaited him, however, a different welcome. Tax- 
iles's zeal had had its motive in apprehensions of 
the waxing power of his neighbour and rival, the 
King of the Paurauvas, whom the Greeks called 



326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 435 

Porus; and this Porus was already collecting his 
forces to dispute the passage of the Hydaspes. It 
was no confused horde, such as Darius had assem- 
bled at Gaugamela, that Alexander had here to 
face, but a disciplined and sturdy army, solidly com- 
pacted under resolute and intelligent leadership. 
The determined resistance which it offered in a 
battle lasting from the early morning till the eighth 
hour of the day showed that the old Aryan vigour 
still was there, and, furthermore, that these Hindu 
Aryans had acquired what their Iranian brethren 
lacked — the power of organisation, and the sense for 
cooperative mechanical action under central control. 
In the battle with Porus, Alexander was called 
upon to face conditions substantially different from 
any which had confronted him before in his already 
varied experience; and if any further proof was 
needed of the catholicity of his military genius, we 
have it when this youth of thirty years, after facing 
the Illyrians and Thracians on their mountain sides, 
the Boeotian phalanx in the plains of Thebes, the 
Persian cavalry at the Granicus, after scaling the 
walls of Tyre and humbling the impregnable fort- 
resses of Gaza, after scattering the assembled hosts 
of western Asia at Gaugamela, and driving the un- 
tamed sons of Iran from their plains and their aeries, 
passed through the eastern gates of the known, 
joined conflict with an utterly new, strange world, 
and won his battle from a people who combined in 
their resources, as none he had yet met, wealth, 
courage, organisation, and an advanced acquaintance 
with the art of war. No great general in the world's 



436 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

history was ever exposed to such a variety of tests, 
and yet he is the only one who never lost a battle. 

When Alexander, with his army, reached the 
banks of the Hydaspes, he found it swollen by the 
melting snows of the mountains to a mighty stream 
a mile in width. Fording could be attempted only 
at a few favoured spots, and for an army in the face 
of an enemy was out of the question. On the 
southern bank opposite was drawn up the army of 
Porus, thirty-five thousand strong. Three hundred 
elephants disposed along the line looked like towers 
in the living wall. To attempt landing an attacking 
force from boats in the face of this opposition was 
vain. The horses of the cavalry could not have 
been brought to face the elephants, whose strange 
odour and stranger trumpetings drove them into un- 
manageable panic ; and the cavalry was Alexander's 
chief reliance for the attack. There was nothing 
left, therefore, but to wait for a better chance or to 
find a better way. 

No opportunity, however, was given the enemy 
for relaxing interest or dividing attention. Every 
day or two a feint was made at crossing. Boats 
would be assembled, the cavalry would be drawn up 
on the bank, a squad would drive into the river. 
Sometimes the trumpets would blare out through 
the night, as if calling the attack; and then the 
subtle Greeks could have their joy at seeing these 
honourable Hindus keeping their sleepless watch in 
battle order, and the solemn elephants drawn up in 
ponderous and vain array. And so it went on until 
apprehension grew callous, 



326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 437 

Then Alexander allowed the rumour to spread 
that he should wait until the low water of autumn 
before attempting to cross. The country round 
about was ravaged, — and incidentally reconnoitered, 
— and the great stores of supplies accumulated at 
the river-side gave credence to the story of the sum- 
mer wait. The movement of Alexander's troops up 
and down the river ceased to provoke suspicion. 

Nine or ten miles above the Macedonian camp 
the Hydaspes turned abruptly in its southward 
course to flow toward the west ; and near the sharp 
angle of its bend, a point which made out into the 
river afforded a convenient passage to a wooded 
island hard by the opposite shore. Between the 
camp and this tongue of land the river-bank was 
heavily wooded, and, in sharp contrast to the level 
plain of the other side, rose steeply into hills. At 
intervals along the high bank Alexander posted 
sentries to pass the word along, and so establish a 
complete connection between the camp and the 
chosen place of crossing. Thither, by a circuitous 
route of over fifteen miles * around behind the hills, 
he led a picked body of his troops, about thirty 
thousand strong. The great mass of the army was 
left in camp under command of Craterus, with orders 
to hold the enemy's attention there as long as pos- 
sible. Only after the enemy had wheeled about to 
face the troops, who would meantime have crossed 

* Cunningham, who in his Geography of Ancient India (p. \^lff.) 
identifies the site, verifying in the modern topography every detail 
of the ancient story, reckons the exact distance by the circuit from 
Jalalpur to Dilawar as seventeen miles, which corresponds precisely 
to Arrian's one hundred and fifty stades. 



43 8 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

the river above, and would then be advancing upon 
their right flank, was Craterus to try the crossing. 
A strong division, furthermore, composed of mer- 
cenary troops under the chief command of Meleager, 
was posted on the river-bank half-way between the 
camp and the proposed place of crossing, under 
orders similar to those of Craterus. 

Under cover of a dismal night of furious rain and 
thunder, Alexander reached the river-bank, and 
hastened to improvise a ferriage for his troops. 
The heavy infantry and a detachment of cavalry, in 
all more than half his force, were to remain on this 
side the river to hold in check the army of Abisares 
of Kashmir, known to be close by, advancing to 
Porus's aid. The remainder, composed chiefly of 
cavalry, the hypaspists, and archers, in all about 
thirteen thousand men, prepared to cross. Boats 
sawn asunder had been transported through the 
woods, and now were roughly and hastily joined 
again. Some galleys had been cautiously assembled 
at the spot. Skins stuffed with hay served the pur- 
pose of the cavalrymen, who swam beside their 
horses. Rafts served for others. With the gray of 
morning the storm slackened, the rain ceased ; and 
though the yellow river rushed by fiercer than ever, 
at the signal they plunged in and struggled across. 
The night, the storm, and the wooded island oppo- 
site had thus far hidden them from the enemy's ob- 
servation. The moment they passed the shelter of 
the island and essayed the narrow ford beyond, the 
outposts of the enemy discovered them, and galloped 
away to make report at headquarters. The shore 



326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 439 

was thus left undefended, and the landing was easily 
effected. The risk that Alexander, with his imper- 
fect knowledge of the topography, had taken, was 
disclosed when it was discovered that what had 
seemed to be the shore was really an island ; for an 
arm of the swollen river had cut its way between 
the place of landing and the plain. Then came the 
anxious search for a ford, attended by fear lest the 
enemy might return before they were across. At 
last, through water shoulder-deep, and on uneven, 
slippery footing, they slowly found their way across. 
It was here, in the desperate struggle of the ford, 
there escaped the lips of Alexander that word of 
fine humour which Onesicritus remembered, and 
Plutarch has handed down to us: " O Athenians, 
would ye believe what risks I run to earn your ap- 
plause!" When morning dawned the little army 
had assumed its order in the plain — the Daan horse- 
men and the squadrons of the companion cavalry on 
the left, the hypaspists (five thousand) and other 
footmen, supported by the archers, Agrianians, and 
javelin-men, on flanks and rear. They were now 
about seven miles to the east of Porus's position, 
and their line was exactly at right angles with his. 
He faced the river and the north ; they rested their 
right flank upon the river. In order to face them 
and prevent being attacked on flank and rear, Porus 
would therefore be obliged to abandon, in whole or 
part, his defence of the river-bank, and face about 
to the east. 

Porus's outposts had brought him word that an 
army was crossing the river at the island ford. 



440 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

What army it might be, they had either failed in 
the darkness to see, or had neglected in their assid- 
uous discretion to note. It might be, after all, so 
hope said, the long-expected reinforcements of 
Abisares, King of Kashmir; for there on the north 
shore could still be seen the camp and army of 
Alexander, to all appearances as strong as ever. So 
a body of two thousand horsemen, supported by 
one hundred and twenty chariots, was sent out, 
under command of the King's son, to give welcome 
if it were Abisares, to check the advance and gain 
time if it were Alexander. It seemed hardly possi- 
ble it could be the latter ; it was too rash a venture. 
But Porus did not know his man. 

Alexander was a leader who did not accept the 
situations created for him by others, but by aggres- 
sive action created them for himself. His crossing 
of the river and turning of the enemy's flank had 
suddenly changed the entire plan of battle and the 
entire situation. This movement, familiar to modern 
strategy, had been hitherto unknown in ancient. 
Porus's flank would now be menaced by Meleager, 
his rear by Craterus. His advantage of the river- 
bank had been at a stroke annulled. The two 
armies stood now on the level footing of the same 
plain, and Alexander's cavalry, in which was always 
his chief reliance, came to a hearing. It was Porus 
now who had to adapt himself to circumstances and 
accept a situation. The choice of place and weapons 
had fallen to the creative wit of his antagonist. 

Even now, if Porus had immediately assumed the 
offensive, he must have had the advantage. With 



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326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 441 

his great superiority in numbers (from thirty-five to 
forty thousand against thirteen thousand), and espe- 
cially with the advantage given him by the ele- 
phants, which no cavalry could face, he might have 
surrounded and either annihilated or driven into th? 
river the entire force opposed to him, had he only 
assumed the offensive, and not waited to allow his 
antagonist a choice of the point of attack. 

The force sent out to reconnoitre speedily came 
back in routed fragments, leaving its leader and four 
hundred horsemen dead upon the field, and most of 
the chariots wrecked or the enemy's prizes. There 
was no longer any doubt. It was surely Alexander. 
The great line swung slowly round, and took its 
position in the plain, a mighty front three or four 
miles long, dotted with the towering elephants, 
from fifty to a hundred feet apart. If stationed 
only fifty feet apart, two hundred elephants made a 
line nearly two miles long. These held the centre — 
indeed, the main central extent — of the line. Be- 
tween them crowded the foot-soldiers, and behind 
them masses of infantry formed a second line. At 
the wings were the cavalry and the chariots. A few 
elephants, supported by a considerable force of in- 
fantry, remained at the old position by the river to 
watch the movements of Craterus and menace the 
ford. 

Slowly the great battle-line moved out across the 
meadows until it reached a wide stretch of solid 
ground suited to the movement of the chariots, and 
there it stopped, facing the solidly massed force of 
Alexander, which covered with its front no more 



442 Alexander the Great, [326 B.C. 

than a fifth or a fourth of the space. Here was 
Alexander's opportunity, his only chance. He was 
given the choice of point of attack ; and this was 
what gave him the victory. He was bound to at- 
tack one of the wings in order to avoid the elephants. 
He chose the left or northern wing, not only in 
deference to his usage of attacking with his right 
wing, but because, by keeping near the river, he 
held to his reserve on the other river-bank, and pre- 
vented the possibility of being utterly cut off and 
surrounded. 

The infantry of his centre and left was ordered to 
delay attack until the left wing of the enemy had 
been thrown into confusion by the cavalry attack. 
The attack was opened by the one thousand Daan 
archer horsemen. Overwhelming the cavalry of the 
enemy's left with a shower of arrows, they drew 
them out to attack. Alexander then, with the 
great body of the companion cavalry, swept on to 
the attack, bearing to the front and right. Mean- 
time he had sent Ccenus, with his own regiment of 
cavalry and that of Demetrius, in a wide swing to 
the right against the extreme flank of the enemy, so 
that as the enemy's horse advanced obliquely out 
of position to meet Alexander, they might fall upon 
their rear. Owing to a misinterpretation of Arrian, 
based, it is to be feared, simply on an error of the 
published translations, the current accounts of this 
battle make Ccenus perform the miraculous feat of 
rounding the enemy's right wing and riding along 
their entire rear to reach the rear of their left wing. 

The account, as it stands in the original both of 



326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 443 

Arrian and of Curtius Rufus, is clear and consistent, 
and involves no miracle. The enemy's left was 
simply drawn out of position, and then caught be- 
tween two masses of the Macedonian cavalry. 
Forced to face in two directions, the hostile cavalry 
was speedily thrown into confusion, and scattered 
to the shelter of the elephants. The left of the 
enemy's line was thus at the very beginning utterly 
broken in pieces, and the solid infantry centre, tow- 
ered with the elephants, was exposed to flank at- 
tack. Of the chariots which supported the Indian 
left we hear nothing, strangely enough, in any of 
the accounts of the battle. Alexander won all his 
battles by first breaking the enemy's line, and 
localising the battle at the wounded point. The 
point he chose for his blow in the battle of the 
Hydaspes was the suture between the elephants and 
the cavalry, and was determined by the necessity of 
avoiding the elephants. 

The elephants on the left of the centre were now 
driven forward to attack the united mass of Alexan- 
der's cavalry. The Indian cavalry rallied again to 
support them. The movement was oblique toward 
the left, for Alexander was on their flank. This 
broke their line, and here the advancing phalanx 
found its opportunity. At first the onrush of the 
strange monsters had driven back the Macedonian 
cavalry and riven asunder the solid mass of the in- 
fantry phalanx. But the veteran foot-soldiers stood 
their ground and fought, prodding the elephants 
with their long pikes, disabling the drivers, repelling 
the supporting infantry. Then came the rally of 



444 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

the Macedonian cavalry, driving in the Indian horse 
upon the elephants at the enemy's left, and cooping 
it up in the spaces between them. Following its 
advantage, the companion cavalry, now reuniting 
as if by instinct into a solid body, plied its furious 
attack upon the front and flank of the centre. The 
elephants began slowly to retreat, still, " facing the 
foe, ' ' as Arrian has it, ' ' like ships backing water, and 
merely uttering a shrill, piping sound." The pha- 
lanx had now formed again into a solid body which 
linked shields, and so cavalry and infantry joined in 
slowly pushing the elephants back. As they re- 
treated under pressure, from front and flank, they 
were forced closer together. The troops placed be- 
tween them were literally squeezed out of their 
place. The elephants trampled them underfoot. It 
became a confusion of horse- and foot-soldiers in- 
capable of action, soon a rout. Riderless elephants 
turned in flight through the mob. Just as the battle 
was turning, and while yet the enemy's right still 
stood unengaged in line, Craterus came hastening 
over from the other river-bank to take the burden 
from the shoulders of the weary troops, who had 
added to their all-night toil more than a half -day's 
fighting; for it was now two in the afternoon. 

Porus was no Darius. So long as any part of the 
line stood, he held his place, directing with vigour 
and intelligence the progress of the battle from his 
lookout on his elephant's back. At last, after every 
desperate effort to stay the rout, when all was in 
confusion, the attack thickening about him, and 
himself sorely wounded, he wheeled his elephant 



326 B.C.] Battle of the Hydaspes. 445 

about and retreated. Alexander, struck with ad- 
miration for his coolness, and anxious to spare his 
life, sent first Taxiles, on horseback, to bid him stop ; 
but the old man, when he saw his arch-enemy, 
menaced him with his javelin, and would have none 
of him. Then Meroes, an Indian, and old friend 
of Porus, was sent ; and when he overtook him, 
Porus stopped, and, dismounting, asked for water 
to drink. " And after he had drunk some water, 
and felt refreshed, he bade Meroes lead him forth- 
with to Alexander; and Meroes led him thither." 

Then Alexander, attended by a few of his body- 
guards, rode out to meet him ; and when he saw tne 
defeated King he checked his horse, and looked at 
him, 

" marvelling at his noble, stately figure and his stature; 
for he was above five cubits in height. He marvelled 
and admired him, too, that he did not seem cowed in 
spirit, but advanced frankly and fearlessly, as one brave 
man would meet another brave man, after gallantly 
struggling to defend his throne against another King. 
Alexander was the first to speak, bidding him say what 
treatment he would fain receive at his hands. ' Deal 
with me royally, Alexander.' Alexander was pleased at 
the word, and said ' For mine own part, Porus, " royally " 
be it unto thee; but on thine own part, what is thy royal 
desire ? ' Porus, however, said he was content; ' roy- 
ally ' covered it all " (Arrian). 

This is the story that antiquity always told of the 
chivalrous meeting of these two Aryan gentlemen, 
who knew war as sport. Sportsmen always recog- 
nise each other, the world over. 



446 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

The battle was over. In fineness of plan and 
brilliancy of execution it was Alexander's master- 
piece. The army of Porus had been dashed in pieces, 
almost annihilated. According to Diodorus, twelve 
thousand had been slain ; Arrian says twenty-three 
thousand. The chariots were shattered, their drivers 
killed. Eighty elephants were captured, but more 
had been killed. Among the slain were two sons 
of King Porus. Of the stately array that on the 
morning lined the river-bank and defied advance, 
at evening nothing remained. So sharp does wit 
and will strike the balance of war. 

On the site of the battle-field Alexander founded a 
city which he named Nicsea (Victoria) ; and on the 
other side of the river, near the site of his camp, he 
founded another, and named it from his faithful 
friend, the horse Bucephalus, who, as some say, 
wearied with fatigues and age, as others say, 
wounded in battle, died on the day of the victory. 
It was eighteen years that the horse had been con- 
stantly with him, sharing his lot, and ridden by 
none but him, and he deserved the honour. The 
monument survives to-day as the city of Jalalpur. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

COMPLETED CONQUEST OF THE PENJAB. 
326-325 B.C. 

THE battle of the Hydaspes was fought in May, 
326 B.C. It was just a year since Alexander 
had crossed the Hindu Kush into the Kabul 
valley, Four years had passed since he turned his 
back on Media and the centres of his empire. All 
this time the world quietly waited for him, and 
lived on, almost without event that history records. 
Even Greece, the intense little Greece, was quiet. 
Since the battle of Megalopolis (autumn, 331 B.C.), 
which ended the revolt of Spartan Agis, nothing 
had occurred to disturb the general peace. Athens 
found leisure to indulge in academic politics; and 
^schines's suit against Ctesiphon brought out the 
glorious oration of Demosthenes " On the Crown " 
(August, 330 B.C.) — mostly concerned with matters 
ten or twenty years old. The stock of current issues 
was failing, and Athens, which must needs have 
whereon to debate, was beginning to live in her past. 
The largest interstate controversy of which we hear 

447 



448 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C.- 

is Athens's discussion of an issue in athletics, clean 
and unclean, with the Athletic Council at Olympia. 
One Callippus, an Athenian, having been fined for 
unsportsmanlike behaviour, bribery, in fact, — had 
refused to pay the fine. Athens, making his cause 
her own, and entering protest, was excluded from 
the games of 328 B.C. Then Apollo, the Chief 
Justice of Hellas, uttered his voice from the tripod 
at Delphi, and Athens paid the fine. These years 
of peace had naturally been years of prosperity and 
of rapid commercial development. Rhodes and 
Alexandria were just beginning their great com- 
mercial career. New conditions, arising from the 
consolidation of all the eastern Mediterranean under 
a single government, introduced new methods and 
new possibilities in the conduct of business. A 
clever Greek of Naucratis, in Egypt, early dis- 
covered one possibility which brought much pain to 
Athens. By keeping himself informed, through 
agents at the different ports, concerning the entire 
grain-supply in sight, and the prices at each port, 
he was able to create a grain trust, control the 
movement of grain-ships, and make the price. Thus 
at Athens during this period the price of grain rose 
repeatedly to three or four times its normal value. 
But nothing more stirring than this was happening 
while Alexander tarried in the far East. We re- 
turn, therefore, to him. 

After the battle of the Hydaspes he remained 
some thirty days in Porus's land. His mind was 
already occupied with plans for the return, and 
orders were given for the building of a great fleet 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 449 

of rafts and boats for the voyage down the Indus. 
Porus and Taxiles, now reconciled to each other, 
were both confirmed in their old authority. Alex- 
ander was first and foremost a political conqueror, 
and where he found those whose ability he could 
trust, made the ablest his friends, not his slaves. 

Leaving Craterus to supervise the building of the 
two cities Nicaea and Bucephala, which he had lo- 
cated, he then pushed eastward to complete the con- 
quest of the five-stream land (Penjab). Moving first 
to the north-east, he received the submission of the 
Glaukanikoi, and of their thirty-seven cities, each 
containing not less than five thousand, many over 
ten thousand, inhabitants. Abisares of Kashmir, 
now rendered uncomfortable by the advance toward 
his frontiers, hastened to announce his subjection 
and make it concrete in a present of forty elephants 
and much gold. 

The next one of the rivers which lay in Alexan- 
der's path bears in modern times the name Chenab. 
Its Sanskrit name, Asikni, the Greeks twisted into 
Akesines — "river of healing," forsooth; and the 
omen was good. Crossing it, not without difficulty, 
he passed unopposed through the territory of a 
second Porus, kinsman of the first; who, however, 
being possessed both of cowardice and an evil con- 
science, dared face the conqueror neither for battle 
nor reconciliation. Next came the river Ravi, the 
ancient Iravati, which the Greeks called Hyarotis, 
or Hyraotis, the h being gratuitous, and the the 
best approach Greek lips could make to w (v). The 

peoples who dwelt by this river and beyond it, 

29 



450 Alexande7" the Great. [326 B.c- 

abjuring the institution of the kingship, lived in inde- 
pendent self-governed cities, after the manner of the 
primitive village communities; and the Greeks, ap- 
plying the analogy of their own autonomous cities, 
always spoke of them as the ' ' free Hindus. ' ' These 
city-republics offered the stoutest opposition Alex- 
ander had met with since the Hydaspes. Particu- 
larly did the Khattias (Kathaioi) make him difficulty. 
They were the people who fought from behind a 
barricade of waggons, and taught the hero of Shipka 
Pass that waggons have other use in warfare than as 
missiles. Their walled city, Sangala (modern Am- 
ritsir ?), yielded only after a siege and storm which 
condemned, as the story is, some seventeen thou- 
sand of its defenders to slaughter, and left seventy 
thousand prisoners of war. 

One after another, now, the cities of the district 
gave themselves over to the fearful conqueror; and 
so the army finally came to the banks of the Hypasis 
(Sanskrit Vipaca), above its junction with what is 
the modern Sutlej, the easternmost of the five rivers, 
and the natural limit to the eastward march. Alex- 
ander's entrance into India had contemplated no- 
thing beyond a conquest of the Penjab as a part of 
the Persian Empire. In fact, he knew of no other 
India. India proper was the Indus region, and the 
new India of the Ganges valley was beyond the know- 
ledge of the Western or the Persian world. The 
Ganges was unknown to Aristotle. Strange to say, 
too, none of the writers who were among Alexander's 
associates seem ever to have mentioned it, neither 
Ptolemy nor Aristobulus, Onesicritus nor Nearchus. 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 45 1 

Megasthenes, who wrote in the fourth decade of 
the third century B.C., was the first to tell of the 
Ganges land ; and he had learned of its existence, 
not through reports of Alexander's soldiers, but 
through personal information obtained when present 
as ambassador at the court of Sandracottus. Alex- 
ander is, to be sure, represented as referring to the 
Ganges in the speeches which Arrian and Curtius 
Rufus put upon his lips. These formal speeches, 
however, are clearly the work of rhetoricians cent- 
uries later than Alexander; for they are sadly out 
of tune with Alexander's ideas, and attribute to him 
plans of a world-conquest in terms of a geography 
he did not and could not possess. The forgery is 
easy of detection. For instance, in the speech, to 
his officers, Arrian makes Alexander say : 

" Now, if any one desires to hear where our warfare 
will find its end and limit, let him know that the distance 
from where we are to the river Ganges and the sunrise 
sea is no longer great; and with this, you will find, is 
connected the Hyrcanian [Caspian] Sea; for the Great 
Sea surrounds the entire earth. I will also demonstrate 
to the Macedonians and their allies not only that the 
Indian Gulf is confluent with the Persian, but that the 
Hyrcanian [Caspian] Sea is confluent with the Indian 
Gulf." * 

We have already seen in another connection 
(Chapter XXIV) that the erroneous idea of a con- 
nection between the Caspian and the Arctic Ocean 
had currency in Arrian's time, chiefly on the au- 

* Arrian, Anabasis, v., 26. 



452 Alexander the Great. [326 B.c- 

thority of Eratosthenes, but that Alexander, who 
believed the Jaxartes was the Tanais (Don), or con- 
fluent with it, and so a tributary of the Sea of Azov, 
could have conceived of the Caspian only as an in- 
land sea, perhaps connected in some way with the 
Sea of Azov, or with the Black Sea directly. Other 
indications coupled with this lead to the unmistak- 
able conclusion that the speech does not rest upon 
the authority of Alexander's contemporaries, but is 
purely an artificial product, projecting the ideas of 
the first or second century after Christ back upon 
the fourth century before Christ. 

All that we can of certainty know is that when 
Alexander reached the eastern part of the Penjab he 
heard that beyond the Sutlej there lay a fertile 
country where 

"the inhabitants were skilled in agriculture and brave 
in war; where they conducted government in orderly 
manner, and held the masses under the rule of the better 
class and in respect for the laws of property; where there 
were elephants much more abundant in number than 
among the other Indians; and where the men were su- 
perior in stature and courage. ' ' * 

Whether this was a vague intimation of the Ganges 
country, three hundred miles beyond the desert, or 
only a story of a Penjab district beyond the river, 
we cannot tell. Surely the name Ganges was not 
mentioned. 

Though Alexander had already planned the de* 
scent of the Indus, and had left orders behind for 



*Arrian, Anabasis, v., 25. 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 453 

the building of a fleet, his curiosity impelled kim to 
push on yet farther than he had originally planned. 
The world kept stretching out before him in unex- 
pected width. Particularly the story of a settled 
civilisation, and of a society regulated by peculiar 
institutions, whetted his curiosity and aroused his 
ambition. 

At the Jaxartes he had turned back because he 
believed he was at the boundary between Asia and 
Europe, and only the barbarian Scyths were beyond. 
His notions of the civilised world had always been 
bounded at the east by the limits of Darius's Em- 
pire. Civilisation and the Persian Empire had thus 
far meant to him one and the same thing — at least, 
so far as the East was concerned.* 

When the King began his preparations for cross- 
ing the Hypasis, he found his army, for the first 
time in all his experience, reluctant to follow him. 
The men were weary. Many were wounded, many 
were ill. Seventy days of incessant rain had served 
to intensify their ills, and abate their ambition to 
know more of such a land. The King's address to 
his assembled officers, urging them to go on, fell on 



* The idea presented by Dr. Kaerst, in his recent Forschungen 
zur Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (1887), that the invasion of 
India represents an utterly new departure in Alexander's plans, and 
the beginning of a scheme of world-conquest, finds no support in the 
plain contemporary facts. Alexander's desire to cross the Sutlej 
and push on farther was unmistakably developed after leaving the 
Hydaspes, and was more an incident of his ambition and restless 
energy than the product of a settled, far-reaching, and long-formu- 
lated plan. See also Dr. Kaerst's Historic he Zeitschrift N. F., 
xxxviii., pp. I^"., 193^". 



454 Alexander the Great. [326 B.c- 

unwilling ears. Ccenus, in his reply, voiced the 
universal wish for a return. 

It was a new thing for Alexander to be crossed in 
his desires. In chagrin and disappointment, he 
shut himself up for two days in his tent, and con- 
versed with no one. When, however, on the third 
day he found no change in the temper of his men, 
and " the profound silence throughout the camp in- 
dicated that the soldiery, though annoyed at their 
leader's wrath, were still unmoved by it," he arose, 
as Ptolemy reports, and caused the sacrifices for the 
omens of crossing to be made; but when these 
turned out unfavourable, he called the elders of the 
hetairoi and his nearest friends together, and an- 
nounced his decision to return. 

" Then they shouted out as a mixed multitude would 
shout when rejoicing; and many of them were in tears; 
some even approached the royal tent and implored bless- 
ings many and great upon Alexander, because, forsooth, 
by them alone he had suffered himself to be conquered " 
(Arrian). 

After building there twelve high, tower-like altars, 
and dedicating them with sacrifices and gymnastic 
and equestrian sports, he turned back through the 
country where seven peoples and two thousand 
cities had yielded to his sway, and came to the Hy- 
daspes again, where his fleet was building. It was 
now September, 326 B.C. About two thousand 
boats, including no less than eighty thirty-oared 
galleys and some with a bank and a half of oars, 
had been assembled. Twenty-four Macedonians, 



3 2 5 B . c ,] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 455 

eight Greeks, and. one Persian were appointed cap- 
tains or trierarchs; and in old-fashioned Greek style 
assigned the expense and the honour of fitting out 
the larger ships. Nearchus the Cretan was made 
admiral of the fleet, and Onesicritus the pilot of the 
royal galley, both destined to win immortal fame by 
their accounts of the voyage they were beginning. 

When, after solemn offerings to the gods of river 
and sea, the great fleet, at dawn of some day in 
October, 326 B.C., pushed out upon the current, 
and in stated order started down toward the sea, 
the end of Alexander's conquests had been reached, 
and the return to peace and settled life was begun. 
Standing on the prow of the royal galley, Alexander 
poured from a golden goblet libations to each of the 
rivers on which he was to sail ; again, he poured to 
Hercules, to Ammon, and to each of the gods 
whom it was his wont to invoke; and then the 
trumpet signal rang out, the oars moved, and the 
strange argosy was on its way toward the unknown 
sea. 

Even the dull prose of Arrian takes on an almost 
poetic luster as he describes the scene. The sharp 
cry of the boatswains as they timed the stroke, and 
the droning sound or clamorous shout of the rowers 
as they swung at their work, mingling with the thud 
and dash of the oars, reverberated from the high 
banks or the groves which lined the shores like the 
din of armies in battle. The natives swarmed from 
their villages to line the shore and wonder at the 
strange spectacle ; and most of all they marvelled at 
the sight of horses figuring as passengers on boats. 



456 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C. 

And as the fleet moved on, they ran and danced 
along the bank, singing their native songs. " For 
since the time when Dionysus and his attendant 
Bacchanals traversed the land of the Indians, these 
people have been eminently fond of singing, and of 
dancing too " (Arrian). 

On board the ships had been embarked, with 
Alexander, the archers, the hypaspists, the Agrian- 
ians, and the cavalry agdma, that is, the flower of the 
army. The mass of the army followed on land in 
three detachments: one, under Craterus, on the 
right bank; another, under Hephaestion, on the left ; 
while a third, under Philip's command, brought up 
the rear, three days' marches behind Hephaestion. 
Slight opposition was experienced from the popula- 
tion along the banks, and seldom was any attempt 
made by the troops to penetrate far into the neigh- 
bouring country. Alexander's plan seems to have 
been satisfied in simply making the descent of the 
river, following the course of the Persian explorers 
before him. _ When he should have done this, and 
then followed the coast back to the head of the 
Persian Gulf, he would have made the circuit if the 
empire which had fallen to his hands, and have vin- 
dicated the right to rule and shape it; but, more 
than this, he would have linked India to his empire 
by a sea route as well as by land. 

The first determined opposition to the progress of 
the expedition was offered by the warlike Mallians, 
(ancient Malavas) dwelling in the region of the mod- 
ern Multan. Their territory extended on both sides 
of the river Hyraotis (Ravi), which in Alexander's 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 45 7 

time flowed into the Akesines (Chenab) below 
Multan, and not, as now, thirty miles above it. 

It would scarcely concern us here to recount the 
story of the Mallians, and their vain struggle in self- 
assertion, were it not that it affords us another 
glimpse of the man Alexander in relief against a 
risk that almost cost him his life. After a forced 
march through the desert, he had taken one city 
after another, scattered opposition, and pursued the 
fugitives from one bank of the river to the other, 
until at last he came, on the eighth day of his cam- 
paign, to a strongly fortified town, which may have 
stood on the site of the present city of Multan. 

With the first break of day the assault upon the 
walls of the town began. The Mallians were unable 
to defend them. Alexander broke one of the gates, 
and, at the head of his troops, burst into the city 
unopposed. The entire population had taken refuge 
behind the high towered walls of the citadel. The 
attack upon that was immediately begun. Some 
started to undermine the wall; others brought on 
two scaling-ladders, and tried to set them in place. 
Missiles rained down from the defenders swarming 
on the battlements. It was too much for flesh and 
blood. The onset faltered. Impatient at the de- 
lay, Alexander seized one of the ladders and with 
his own hand placed it against the wall ; then, pro- 
tecting himself with his shield, he ran up the ladder, 
and pushed and fought his way to a standing-ground 
on the top. 

The veteran captains Peucestas and Leonnatus 
were close behind him. Abreas, a trusty old man- 



45 8 Alexander the Great. [326 b.c- 

at-arms, mounted on a second ladder. Men crowded 
to follow the leaders. Under the weight the ladders 
broke, and the four men were left isolated on the 
rampart. From the towers on each side, from the 
battlements around them, from the ground within, 
missiles of every sort pelted them. The majestic 
figure and the shining armour of the King made a 
greedy target. From without a hundred voices 
called him to leap back into safety. He cast no 
look behind, but, measuring with a glance the dis- 
tance, deliberately sprang from the rampart straight 
into the heart of the citadel and into the midst of 
the enemy. 

It was rashness, perhaps it was folly ; but it was 
the folly of one who never sought success without 
risk, and who always succeeded — of one who had 
made himself a leader of men without parallel, be- 
cause his followers never saw him falter nor hesitate, 
but always act. 

With the wall at his back, he held the enemy for 
a time at bay, striking down with his sword the few 
venturesome ones who dared approach him, holding 
others in check by hurling stones. Then they 
crowded in a half-circle about him, pelting him with 
stones and javelins and arrows. His three com- 
panions had now leaped down and joined him in the 
fight. Abreas soon fell, pierced through the fore- 
head by an arrow. A heavy missile smote the 
helmet of the King. Dazed for a moment by the 
blow, he lowered his guard, and a heavy arrow, 
penetrating his breastplate, fastened itself deep in 
the lung. Still he fought on; but the blood with 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 459 

every breath spurted from the wound. Faint with 
loss of blood, he faltered, dropped upon his knee, 
then swooned upon his shield. Still Peucestas and 
Leonnatus stood by him, the former covering him 
with the sacred shield brought from Athena's house 
at Troy. It looked as if the end of all were nigh at 
hand. 

A fury of excitement reigned without the wall. 
From the moment they saw their leader disappear 
within the rampart, the madness of desperation 
seized upon the troops. Some hammered at the 
gate ; some ran for ladders ; some drove pegs in the 
adobe walls, and dragged themselves slowly up hand 
over hand ; some mounted by human ladders over 
the shoulders of men. One by one they gained the 
top. One by one, with howls of vengeance, breath- 
ing grief at the sight of their prostrate leader, they 
came vaulting into the citadel, firebrands of fury. 
Rents were opened in the gates. Men pushed 
through, crept through. On the track of dozens 
followed scores and hundreds. A rill became a tor- 
rent, then a flood. That day there was no pity. 
The sword spared not of all it found — man, woman, 
or child. 

Alexander was carried out upon his shield to a 
tent. He had been wounded many times before, 
but his men had never seen him prostrate, and now 
the rumour spread throughout the army that he was 
dead. Within the tent they were trying to remove 
the missel that was still fastened in the breast. First 
they sawed off the wooden shaft so as to remove the 
cuirass; but the great head of the arrow, three 



460 Alexander the Great. [326 B.C.- 

fingers broad and four fingers long, clung in the 
wound. 

The efforts to remove it roused the King from his 
swoon. He essayed with his own hand to widen the 
wound; but strength failed him, and, at his bid- 
ding, Perdiccas used his own sword in rude surgery, 
until, followed by a fierce hemorrhage, the barbs 
came forth. He swooned again. The flow of blood 
stopped. All that day and through the night they 
watched by him, while life and death hung in the 
balances; and outside the tent the soldiery waited, 
still under arms, and in sleepless anxiety, until word 
came with the morning grey that the King had 
fallen into quiet sleep. 

The first word which had reached the main army, 
waiting by the Akesines, four days distant, an- 
nounced the death of the King. " And at first 
there arose the voice of lamentation from all the 
army, as the rumour was handed on from one man 
to another " (Arrian). Then lamentation yielded 
to dejection and despair. Who could lead them 
back to their homes out of a strange land through 
hostile peoples ? Who but Alexander would be 
obeyed by themselves or feared by their foes ? 
When word came later that Alexander was recover- 
ing, though not yet strong enough to rejoin the 
army, they would not believe it. They thought the 
generals were deceiving them. 

When Alexander heard this, for fear some out- 
break might occur, he had himself conveyed on 
board a vessel, and started down the Hyraotis to- 
ward the camp. So far was he yet from recovery 



325 B.C.] Completed Conquest of the Penjab. 46 1 

that, lest he should be irritated by the shock of the 
oars, the galley was allowed simply to drop down 
the stream with the current until it came to the 
river-mouth, where were the camp and the fleet. 
The soldiers crowded to the bank, awaiting it. 
Alexander had caused the awnings to be removed 
from over the stern, where he lay, that all might 
see him. They said, however, to themselves, " It 
is Alexander's body they are bringing," until, as 
the galley neared the bank, he stretched out his 
hand toward the multitude in a gesture of welcome. 

" Then a mighty shout arose, and they stretched up 
their hands, some toward heaven, some toward Alexan- 
der himself. Many could not help shedding tears at the 
unexpected sight. Now some of the guard brought him 
a litter, when he was taken out of the ship; but he bade 
them bring him a horse; and when they saw him again 
on horseback, the whole army resounded again and again 
with clapping of hands. On coming to his tent, he dis- 
mounted, so that he might be seen walking. Then the 
men crowded around him on every side, some touching 
his hands, some his knees, some only his raiment. Some 
came near enough to get a glimpse of him, and turned 
back, thanking Heaven. Some threw garlands upon 
him, some the flowers which India at the season yields " 
(Arrian). 

It is told, on the authority of Nearchus, that some 
of his friends reproached Alexander for exposing 
himself so recklessly in battle, and urged that this 
was the duty of the common soldier, not of the 
general. Thereupon, an old Boeotian soldier, who 



462 Alexander the Great. [326-325 B.C. 

had seen the advice was not to Alexander's mind, 
came to his support with a plain word, enriched in 
good Boeotian brogue: " Deeds, Alexander, tell the 
man " ; and capped it with a snatch of verse from 
^Eschylus: " Who does must suffer." This pleased 
Alexander. 

Alexander exposed himself unduly in battle. With 
so much depending upon his life, ordinary judgment 
cannot fail to pronounce his action unwise and reck- 
less. That he escaped from all his risks must be 
reckoned to the account of his own impetuous con- 
fidence of success rather than to his luck. Nothing 
is more characteristic of him than that energy and 
brilliancy of will which fastened its look upon the 
result desired, and, as if by an auto-suggestion, 
clearly saw it as an accomplished reality. The 
Alexander who leaped from the wall at Multan was 
the same Alexander who had led the charge at 
Granicus and dared the sea beneath the cliffs of 
Mount Climax. His conduct during the Indian 
campaign affords no basis whatsoever for the theory 
of those who claim that since the conquest of 
Mesopotamia his mind and manner had suffered 
radical change. Neither was he, so far as we can 
see, any more or less a god, in his practical dealings 
with men and things, than before the famous seance 
at the oracle of Ammon. He had grown older and 
sterner, but surely he was very much a man among 
men. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

RETURN TO PERSIA. 
325-324 B.C. 

FROM the mouth of the Hyraotis (Ravi) the 
flotilla passed on down the Akesines (Chenab) 
a hundred and fifty miles or more, and found 
its way into the great Indus. Here Alexander 
founded a city, which some say he named Alex- 
andria, and built a dockyard, intending that this 
place, as an outpost of the Penjab satrapy, and lo- 
cated at the apex of the five-river district, should 
become the emporium of the region. 

The tribes along the Indus banks, among whom 
the Brahmans appear to have had more political 
significance than among the peoples farther to the 
north, frequently opposed the march of the army ; 
and the fleet was moored first at one bank, then at 
the other, while accounts were being settled with 
them. In the land of the Sogdoi another city was 
founded, also equipped with a dockyard, and appa- 
rently also with the name Alexandria. The location 
was evidently chosen with reference to the route 

463 



464 Alexander the Great. [325 B.C.- 

through the Bolan Pass toward Kandahar, and may 
have been that of the modern Sukkur, or of Kash- 
mor, higher up the river. The region between the 
mouth of the Akesines and the sea, approximately 
the modern province of Sindh, was constituted a 
satrapy under the government of Peithon. At this 
point about a third of the whole army, including 
the infantry brigades of Attalus, Meleager, and An- 
tigenes, together with a body of archers and a large 
number of veterans who, as unfit for longer service, 
were returning home, started, under command of 
Craterus, on the direct route westward by the Bolan 
Pass and Kandahar, and through the territory of 
the Arachotians and Drangians. This would have 
been the natural route for the whole army to have 
taken ; but Alexander was occupied with the supreme 
desire of testing the ocean route, and tracing the 
bounds of his empire where they followed the hem 
of the world. 

He therefore proceeded down the river, and in the 
midsummer of 325 B.C. reached Patala, at the apex 
of the delta, not far from the modern Hyderabad. 
Eight or nine months had been spent in descending 
the river. 

After ordering a harbour and shipyards, with 
proper fortifications, to be constructed here, he pro- 
ceeded to explore the delta, and made his first 
astonished acquaintance with the phenomenon of 
tides ; for in the Mediterranean, the only sea he knew, 
the tidal flow is seldom enough to attract attention. 

' ' While the vessels were moored here the phenomenon 
of the ebb-tide of the great sea appeared, so that their 



324 B.C.] Return to Persia. 465 

ships were left stranded high and dry. And although 
this brought to Alexander's companions, who had never 
seen it before, no small alarm, they were much more 
startled when, as the time came round, the water flowed 
in and lifted their ships from the ground. The ships 
which it found settled in the mud it lifted quietly, 
and they floated again, without any injury whatsoever; 
but the ships which were moored higher up, on drier 
land, and rested on uneven bottom, when a compact 
wave came rushing in, were some of them dashed against 
one another, some of them driven against the bank and 
wrecked " (Arrian). 

After satisfying himself that the eastern branch 
furnished the best course for the fleet, he located a 
harbour and dockyards near its mouth; and with- 
out venturing on to the sea farther than to visit two 
islands near the coast, he contented himself with a 
three days' ride along the shore, in order to form 
an idea how a fleet was likely to fare in a coasting 
voyage. The extreme caution and anxiety dis- 
played by the King in all these preliminary ex- 
plorations and preparations testify not only to his 
appreciation that he was dealing with new and 
strange conditions, and more than ever before facing 
the unknown, but also to the high importance which 
the venture had assumed in his mind. 

At last, some time in September, 325 B.C., accom- 
panied by a force of from twenty-five to thirty thou- 
sand men, including the cavalry age'ma, half the 
hypaspists, and others of the best troops, he started 
on his terrible march along the Gedrosian coast, 

leaving Nearchus with the fleet, to wait until, a 

30 



466 Alexander the Great. [325 B.c- 

month or more later, the setting of the Pleiades 
should bring the change from the south-west to the 
north-east monsoon, and insure a quiet sea and a 
wind fair or on the beam. 

The army fought its way through the hostile land 
of the Oreitans, and then began its fearful sixty 
days through the Mekran, the coast desert of Balu- 
chistan, the hottest and "most hopeless part of the 
world. After Alexander's experience, no European 
is known to have penetrated it down to the present 
century. During the first part of the march con- 
tinual attention was paid to what had been an im- 
portant purpose of the expedition — the collection of 
supplies at points on the shore, and the digging of 
wells for the use of the fleet which was to follow. 
Later there were times when the army could find 
neither water nor food for itself. 

The heat grew fiercer. No tree offered its shade. 
The scanty water-courses were dry. Rolling hillocks 
of sand, in which the foot-soldier sank half to the 
knee, crossed the path. Nothing so far as the eye 
could reach but these billows of sand, and now and 
then, far off to the left, the glare of the barren sea. 
Exploring parties sent down from the plateau to the 
beaches reported that they found only miserable 
ichthyophagi, living in meager huts built of shells 
and the bones of fish, subsisting, without vegetable 
food, on fish alone, and drinking the brackish water 
that oozed through the sand of the beach. 

As they proceeded the supply of water became 
scantier. Sometimes they marched thirty, forty, 
even fifty miles without a drop of water to quench 



324 B.C.] Return to Persia. 467 

the awful fever of the desert thirst. Hunger beset 
them. Discipline lost its control. Corn-sacks scaled 
with the King's seal and destined to be left in store 
for the fleet were torn open and the corn stolen. 
Men killed the beasts of burden and the horses, ate 
the flesh, then lied, and said the animals had per- 
ished in the heat. Waggons carrying the sick were 
left standing in the desert, the animals that drew 
them being taken for food. Alexander suffered 
with the rest. Once when he was faint with thirst, 
some soldiers brought him, from a " mean little 
spring" they had found in a shallow cleft by the 
way, a bit of water in a helmet ; but, David-like, he 
poured it out on the ground before them, and gave 
them new heart, as if the water " had furnished a 
draught for every man." One by one they dropped 
by the way. Men lay down to sleep in the long, 
hot night marches, and woke to find the glare of 
day, the desert blank, and no track in the shifting 
sands. After sixty days a disordered mass of fam- 
ished, half-naked men reached the oasis of Pura, but 
it was barely a half of the army that had entered 
the desert. 

After some days of rest the relics of the army 
pushed on into Carmania, where a junction was 
effected with the division which under Craterus had 
followed the northern route. Reinforcements from 
the army of Media came now to meet them. Stasa- 
nor, the satrap of the Areians, came, too, with the 
camels, beasts of burden, and supplies in abundance. 

Horses, arms, and clothing could now be dis- 
tributed to the army that had crossed the desert. 



468 Alexander the Great. [325 B.c- 

Carmania itself was a land of plenty. A thank- 
offering to the gods for the victories in India and 
the rescue from the jaws of the desert, a feast, 
games, a musical festival, and a round of Dionysiac 
merrymakings — these were all in the orthodox Greek 
programme, under which the King and his men 
celebrated the recovered joy of life. 

As yet no word had come concerning the fleet. 
It was now the beginning of December (325 B.C.). 
Nearchus was to have set sail toward the end of 
Octoben He had seven hundred and fifty miles in 
a straight line to cover before reaching, at the en- 
trance of the Persian Gulf, the harbour of Gumrun 
(Bender-Abbas), behind which, sixty or seventy 
miles inland, was Alexander's camp. There was, 
therefore, no immediate cause for solicitude, as no 
one could reckon with any certainty upon the 
time that the voyage would require; but, never- 
theless, as December came on, Alexander showed 
intense anxiety and nervously awaited tidings from 
the messengers he had sent to watch along the 
coast. 

The fleet had in reality started early in October, 
but contrary winds, as might have been expected, 
had held it in check for some three weeks oft* the 
mouths of the Indus. Once well under way, the 
voyage went, on the whole, prosperously. Scarcity 
of water and provisions gave the men at times much 
solicitude, but wind and weather favoured, and 
troubles passed. Among the many strange experi- 
ences they had to tell in after days, and which 
Nearchus with prosaic exactness recorded in his 



324 B.C.] Return to Persia. 469 

story of the voyage, the spouting whales and the 
terror they inspired held the first place in novel in- 
terest. This had the flavour of the Great Sea about 
it — a new thing for Greeks. After about thirty days 
they sighted the promontory of Ras Musandam, 
which marks the Arabian side of the Hormuz 
Straits, at the entrance to the gulf. Nearchus's 
conservative sense here spared the fleet the danger 
of missing the gulf altogether, as might have been 
the case had he followed Onesicritus's advice and 
steered for the headland. He would in that case 
have run the risk of being diverted into a trip down 
the east coast of Arabia, and might never have been 
heard from again. Fortunately, however, he kept 
along, hugging the shore, and sailed on into the 
straits, and in four or five days the ships were safely 
moored in the river Anamis, near what is now the 
harbour of Bender-Abbas. 

Here the men were glad to disembark in the 
pleasant land. A party of sailors who had gone a 
little way inland to explore the country spied in the 
distance a man wearing a Greek shoulder-cape. He 
looked, too, like a Greek. When they came near 
him and saluted him, and heard him answer in 
Greek, they wept for joy, " so unexpected a thing 
was it for them, after all their toils, to see a Greek 
and hear a Greek voice." And what, too, was 
their joy to hear, when they asked him whence he 
was, that he came from Alexander's camp ! There 
was now no honour too great for the King to 
show Nearchus. His delight was unbounded. He 
said, and confirmed it with an oath by Zeus and 



470 Alexander the Great. [325 B.c- 

Ammon, that he rejoiced more at the news than at 
being the possessor of all Asia. 

The fleet was now (January, 324 B.C.) sent on to 
explore the coast up to the head of the Persian Gulf. 
Hephaestion, with the main army, proceeded up the 
Persian coast, and Alexander, with the light troops, 
went on to Pasargadae and Persepolis, which he had 
left six years before. In February or March he 
reached Susa. 

In the five years that he had been occupied in the 
extreme north-eastern and south-eastern parts of his 
empire, and especially during the two years of his 
absence in India, when reports of his death repeat- 
edly gained currency, many things had gone awry 
in the government. Here and there symptoms of 
disorder and revolt had shown themselves. In 
Bactria there was open insurrection. The military 
commanders in Media had, by violence and arbi- 
trary disregard of the rights and religion of the sub- 
ject people, aroused a furious discontent ; satraps of 
the West had collected armies of mercenaries and 
established themselves in almost complete inde- 
pendence. Greece and Macedonia were in unrest. 
Olympias, the King's mother, was making govern- 
ment difficult, and life in general intolerable, for the 
faithful old Antipater. 

The Harpalus scandal, too, was abroad. This 
keeper of the royal treasure had for years been mak- 
ing the royal funds his own, and while scandalising 
the world with his boldness, regal independence, 
harlots, and riotous living, had paralysed every at- 
tempt to bring him to justice through the enormous 



324 B.C.] Return to Persia. 471 

means at his free disposal. With the news of the 
King's approach he fled first into Cilicia, then into 
Greece, taking the treasure with him; and buying 
his way wherever he went, he left a smirch on vari- 
ous politics and various politicians, among them, 
chief of all, Demosthenes. 

Alexander addressed himself now energetically to 
the task of regulating abuses, punishing offenders, 
and replacing incompetent officials with new ap- 
pointees. His treatment was rigorous and severe. 
As a political organiser and head he showed the 
traits of a business man. He put men in positions 
of responsibility and trusted them fully, until they 
failed him. Then he was severe, and promptly so. 
In righting wrongs, reforming abuses, and estab- 
lishing new organisations, he was frank, direct, and 
exceedingly practical. In reforming he applied cor- 
rectives direct to the evil ; in organising he adapted 
means direct to the end. 

Old institutions he utilised if they could serve his 
purpose. Existing governments and governors were, 
in deference to the settled habits of the governed, 
retained as mechanism. New elements were grafted 
on to the old, where opportunity suggested it. It 
was the wise retention of large parts of the old 
mechanism of the Persian Empire which had made 
it possible for Alexander to be absent five or six 
years from his newly acquired domain, and yet re- 
turn to find the government essentially secure. 

The old provinces or satrapies had been left as 
they were, sometimes under the old satrap. Native 
dynasties were generally retained, often, as in the 



47 2 Alexander the Great. [325-324 B.C. 

case of Ada in Caria and Porus in India, becoming 
the government of a province. In each province 
the military power was given an independent head 
responsible directly to the King as commander-in- 
chief. On to the Persian system of government by 
territorial division was ingrafted the Greek system 
of government by city communities. These cities 
not only served as citadels of the new regime, but 
being, as they were in general, independent of the 
territorial sway of the satraps, they set a check upon 
their power, and tended to prevent what had been a 
weakness in the Persian Empire, the semi-independ- 
ence of the territorial governments. The Oriental 
idea of the kingship exercising its authority through 
governors or satraps thus became blended with the 
Greek idea of the city-state supreme. The Oriental 
conception of the state as lord and land joined with 
the Greek conception of the state as a society of 
men. This is not the least important illustration 
of the way the East was married to the West. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

AT SUSA AND OPIS. 
324 B.C. 

WHEN in February or March, 324 B.C., the 
armies of Hephaestion and of Alexander 
and the fleet under Nearchus met at Susa, 
the great days of the conquest were at an end. 
Men could now look back upon the work and esti- 
mate results. 

It was just ten years since Alexander, then a 
youth of one-and-twenty, had crossed the Helles- 
pont and entered Asia. He had received as an in- 
heritance from his father the plan and policy of unit- 
ing the Greeks and bringing them to the service of 
Macedonian ambitions, by leading them, or promis- 
ing to lead them, against the Persians. This plan 
he idealised into a contest between the East and the 
West, dreaming himself another Achilles. His 
youthful enthusiasm and vigour, under the inspira- 
tion of success, raised it to enlarged dimensions. 

What was to come after victory and conquest he 
seems, from the first, not to have planned, or at 

473 



474 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

least but vaguely. He would conquer the barbarians 
and avenge the insults of Xerxes. He would glorify 
the plain old nationality of Macedonia, and provide 
its sturdy warriors and himself with food enough to 
feed the craving after war and enterprise and con- 
quest. Scarcely more than this was in his mind. 
But the years and the facts had brought a develop- 
ment of his ideas that gave his plan a larger and a 
different form. He had acquired respect for much 
he had observed in Oriental life and character. 
There was more in the world than he had thought. 
He had seen the strength and the resources of the 
old civilisation of Mesopotamia. The men of Bok- 
hara were as brave and manly as the best he knew 
in Greece. In the Nile Delta men of different races 
and civilisation were found mingling peacefully to- 
gether in a cooperative life. The idea of bringing the 
East and West together in a composite civilisation 
to which each should contribute its best, grew upon 
him with the years. But the old-line Macedonians 
adhered to their first theory of the conquest, well sum- 
marised in the dictum, " To the victors belong the 
spoils." They had undertaken the war for a Mace- 
donian " expansion " that meant only exploitation. 
Their ideas did not grow with his ; hence the murmur- 
ings we hear in the transition years from 330 B.C. 
to 327 B.C. They interpreted his new international- 
ism as outright apostasy, and cast at him the slurs 
which, translated into modern local idiom, taunt 
with Anglomania or un-Americanism him who has 
abated somewhat of his provincial bias. They were 
hard men, and narrow, and incapable of understanding 






324 B.C.] At Susa and Opts. 475 

their master's mind. What they thought about 
him and said about him in this regard, as also in re- 
gard to his supposed claim of divinity, is to be inter- 
preted as no better than a crude caricature of the 
original. Small men's reports of large ideas are all 
caricatures. 

Alexander's interest had shifted from an expan- 
sion that meant imposition from without to an 
expansion which encouraged cooperation and de- 
velopment from within, and with this shifting of in- 
terest Macedonia and its claims had been relegated 
from the centre to the outskirts. It was now merely 
one province of an empire. In its name and by its 
military power empire was administered and main- 
tained ; but that name and power was no end unto 
itself, but only an opportunity for order, under 
whose covert interchange might flourish, prejudice 
abate, and the larger civilisation arise. From Aris- 
totle, his teacher, Alexander had imbibed the aris- 
tocratic doctrine that the Greek, by virtue of his 
superior intelligence and independence of will, was 
natural lord of the barbarian ; but experience of the 
facts proved the doctrine vainly academic and led 
the mind of the conqueror away from the dicta of 
aristocracy toward the ideals of the imperialistic 
democracy. When he broke on this issue with 
Aristotle he broke with the old world. 

Ten years of conquest had consolidated into one 
colossal organisation all the organisations of life, 
thought, religion, and law in the central known 
world, and for this one organisation the conqueror 
conceived a government and a life not imposed by 



476 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

one of its members as from without, but contributed 
by all its members as from within. It is in the 
formulation of this idea, rather than in feats of 
arms, that Alexander's first claim to greatness rests. 
The winnings of his battles vanished away ; the out- 
ward organisation of his empire perished with his 
death; but the idea lived and bore fruit. Rome 
took the shell, Byzantium and the East kept the 
substance, and from Byzantium and the East came 
cosmopolitanism and the inner light, the seeds of 
the Renaissance and of the Reformation. 

The completion of the war of conquest was to be 
celebrated by the army at Susa in a grand five days' 
fete, and Alexander chose to give the festival a form 
which should symbolise the significance he wished 
his conquests to attain — the marriage of Europe and 
Asia. As unique as his conquests was his method 
of celebrating them. He and his generals and 
friends, two-and-ninety of them in all, took them 
wives from the noblest Persian families, and at the 
date of the greater Dionysia, the Eastertide of the 
Greeks, celebrated the joint weddings in one great 
public fete. Plutarch * in one of his essays, glorifies 
with rhetorical exuberance the symbolism of the 
wedding-feast in contrast with Xerxes's bridge, for 
they sought to join Asia to Europe, " not with rafts 
and timbers and senseless bonds, but by the lawful 
love of wedlock, and by community of offspring." 

Alexander himself married Statira, the eldest 
daughter of Darius. Hephaestion received Drypetis, 
a younger daughter; Craterus, a niece of Darius; 

* Plutarch, De Alex. Magni For tuna aut Virtute, i., 7. 






324 B.C.] At Susa and Opis. 477 

Perdiccas, the daughter of the satrap of Media; 
Ptolemy and Eumenes, two daughters of Artabazus; 
Nearchus, the daughter of Mentor; Seleucus, the 
daughter of Spitamenes the Bactrian. 

We have, fortunately, preserved to us an account 
of the festival in the words of Chares of Mitylene, 
who was master of ceremonies at the court, and 
therefore a prime authority. The account is a frag- 
ment of Chares's ten books on the life of Alexander, 
which has been preserved to us in Athenaeus's * 
famous scrap-book, The Diners-out, and also in part 
in ^Elian's * Varia Hist or ia. 

11 It was a hall of a hundred couches (each large 
enough for two to recline at table), and in it each couch, 
made of twenty minas' worth of silver, was decked as for 
a wedding. Alexander's had feet of gold. And to the 
feast were bidden all his Persian friends, and given 
places on the opposite side of the hall from himself and 
the other bridegrooms. And all the army and the sailors 
and the embassies and the visitors were assembled in the 
outer court. The hall was decorated in most sumptuous 
style, with expensive rugs, and hangings of fine linen, and 
tapestries of many colours wrought with threads of gold. 
And for the support of the vast tent which formed the 
hall there were pillars thirty feet high, plated with silver 
and gold, and set with precious stones. And around 
about the sides were costly portieres, embroidered with 
figures and shot through with golden threads, hung on 
gilded and silvered rods. The circuit of the court was 
half a mile. Everything was started at the signal of a 
trumpet-blast, whether it was the beginning of the feast, 

♦Athenseus, xii., p. 538^.; ^Elian, Far, Hist., viii., 7, 



478 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

the celebration of the marriages, or the pouring of one 
of the various libations, so that all the army might know. 
" For five days the wedding-festival continued. There 
participated many Greeks and many barbarians and men 
from India. And famous jugglers and showmen were 
there: Scymnus of Tarentum, and Philistides of Syracuse, 
and Heraclitus of Mitylene. After them the rhapsode 
Alexis of Tarentum gave a recitation. Then there came 
on the cithara virtuosi: Cratinus of Methymna, Aristo- 
nymus of Athens, Athenodorus of Teos. Heraclitus of 
Tarentum, and Aristocrates the Theban, gave songs with 
the cithara, and to the accompaniment of the flute sang 
Dionysius of Heraclea, and Hyperbolus of Cyzicus. 
There were flute virtuosi who played the Pythian air and 
then led the dancers; they were Timotheus, Phrynichus, 
Caphisias, and Diophantus. And there were plays by 
the tragic actors Thessalus and Athenodorus and Aris- 
tocrites, and by the comedians Lycon and Phormion and 
Ariston. Phasimelus, the harp-player, too, was there. 
The crowns that were brought as presents aggregated a 
value of fifteen thousand talents." 

Arrian, too, adds a little : 

" The weddings were celebrated in the Persian form. 
Great chairs of state were set along in a row for the bride- 
grooms, and after the banquet the brides came in and 
took their seats, each beside her own husband. And the 
bridegrooms welcomed them and kissed them. The King 
was the first to begin, and all the rest of the weddings 
followed the same form. This seems to have been one 
of the most popular and friendly things Alexander ever 
did. Each man took his own bride and led her away. 
And Alexander furnished them all with dowries. And 



324 B.C.] At Stisa and Opts. 479 

the names of all the other Macedonians who had married 
Asiatic wives he caused to be registered, and found there 
were over ten thousand of them, and these all received 
from him wedding-gifts." 

Proclamation was now made throughout the army 
that all who were burdened with debt might, on 
registering with the paymaster and stating the 
amount of their debts, receive money for their liquid 
dation. This was at first thought too good to be 
true, and few registered. Men suspected in it a de- 
vice for finding out who had been living extrava- 
gantly. When Alexander heard this he reproached 
them for their distrust of him, and ordered his pay- 
masters hereafter, on the presentation of evidences 
of debt, to pay without registering the debtors' 
names. Thus some twenty thousand talents of 
good money were put into circulation. Large gifts 
of money were also made to all who had rendered 
distinguished service in the wars. A few of those 
most conspicuous for personal bravery received as a 
mark of highest distinction golden crowns. Head- 
ing this roll of honour were Peucestas and Leon- 
natus, the heroes of Multan ; Nearchus, the admiral ; 
Onesicritus, the pilot; and Hephaestion, the lieu- 
tenant-general. 

Alexander came now to face the question of 
the future constitution of his army. Thus far the 
Greco-Macedonian element, even when, as in the 
Indian campaigns, in the minority, had been kept 
distinct, and had furnished the reliable nucleus of 
the army. A large number of these men were now 
becoming, either from age or the exhaustion of the 



480 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

long campaigns, unfit for further service. At least 
ten thousand men would shortly have to be dis- 
charged and sent back to their homes. Should 
their places be filled by the importation of others ? 
It was not in harmony with Alexander's conception 
of a real and permanent conquest, such as he desired, 
that a country should be held in subjugation by a 
foreign army. His purpose of welding Persia and 
Greece into an indivisible whole was better served 
by other means. He had caused to be collected 
from various provinces of the East, and from the 
cities lately founded, a body of recruits, some thirty 
thousand in number, all young men of the best in- 
telligence and vigour, and these, after being drilled 
in the Macedonian tactics and equipped with Mace- 
donian arms, he proceeded to distribute among the 
different regiments of his own best troops. 

This was a terrible shock to the old Macedonian 
sense of propriety. The veterans had never shown 
the slightest objection to the presence of foreign 
brigades and regiments in the army, but now when 
Bactrians, Parthians, Arachotians, and Zarangians, 
fine fellows and magnificent horsemen though they 
might be, were admitted within the sacred lines of 
the companion cavalry, and eight young Asiatic 
princes were enrolled in the age'ma, it was accepted 
as an insult. The suspicion, too, that with this pro- 
cedure Alexander was preparing the way ultimately 
to dispense altogether with the service of his own 
countrymen, and to replace them with barbarians, 
revived the old bugbear of his Persomania, and hur- 
ried discontent into open sedition. At Opis on the 



324 B.C.] At Susa and Opts. 481 

Tigris, whither the army had moved in the early 
summer, when it was learned that some of the old 
soldiers were to be discharged, the opposition flamed 
up suddenly into outright revolt. This was a new 
thing in the army of Alexander. 

In the presence of the assembled host the King 
had arisen to make his announcement. The wars, 
he said, were now past. The great purpose for 
which they were fought had been achieved. Among 
those who had served him so well many were now 
weary of absence from home, wounded, enfeebled. 
He would not settle them in remote cities, as he had 
done with many of their comrades, but would pro- 
vide them return to their homes, and bestow upon 
them such rewards as would make them objects of 
envy wherever they went. 

A storm of protests here interrupted the words of 
the King. " You have used us up, and now you 
cast us aside ! Take your barbarian soldiers ! Will 
you conquer the world with women ? Come, let us 
all go! Keep all or none! Why don't you get 
your father Ammon to help you ? " Such were the 
words hoarse voices shouted, now in challenge, now 
in mockery. 

The tumult grew. The army was a mob. Alex- 
ander sprang from the platform on which he stood 
straight into the midst of the throng. Here one, 
there one of the ringleaders he caught by the arm, 
pointed at, or called by name, as he placed them 
under arrest. The muteness of terror fell upon 
them all. He returned to the dais, and facing their 

sullen silence, addressed them : 
31 



482 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

" Not to prevent your leaving me and marching home- 
ward do I now speak further to you. So far as I am con- 
cerned, go where you will. But one word to show your 
thankfulness to those who have made you what you are. 
My father Philip found you poor and vagabond, clad in 
skins, feeding a few sheep on the mountain-sides, and 
fighting to protect these from the neighbouring Thrac- 
ians and Illyrians. He gave you the soldier's cape to 
replace the skins, settled you in cities, gave you laws and 
manners, made you masters instead of slaves of the bar- 
barians about you, added Thrace to Macedonia, opened 
the mines of the Pangaeum to your industry, the harbours 
of the sea to your commerce. He made you the rulers of 
those very Thessalians before whom you had lately shrunk 
with deadly awe. He humbled the Phocians, and gave 
you entrance into Greece by a broad highway. Instead of 
your paying tribute to the Athenians and obeying the 
Thebans, these states now look to us as arbiters of their 
weal. He entered the Peloponnesus, and was declared 
commander-in-chief of all the Greeks for the war against 
Persia, bringing not more glory to himself thereby than 
to you and your state. This is what my father did for 
you, great when viewed by itself, small in comparison 
with what we have done. 

" From my father I received in inheritance a few gold 
and silver goblets, a treasury containing less than sixty 
talents, and five hundred talents of debts. I borrowed 
eight hundred more, set forth from a land that afforded 
subsistence not even for you, and opened you a way 
across the Hellespont, that the Persian masters of the sea 
controlled. The satraps of Darius I overwhelmed at the 
Granicus. Ionia, ^Eolia, both Phrygias, and Lydia I 
overran, and the fruits of victory came to you. The 
blessings of Egypt and Cyrene fell into your lap. Syria, 



324 B.C.] At Susa and Opts. 483 

Palestine, Mesopotamia, are your possession. Babylon 
and Bactra and Susa are yours; the wealth of the Lydians, 
the treasures of the Persians, the stores of India, the great 
outer sea, all are yours. From among you come satraps 
and generals and taxiarchs. And what have I from all 
these spoils except it be this purple and this diadem ? 
Nothing have I acquired for myself, and no man can 
point to treasure-stores of mine, except to point to these 
your possessions or what is kept in store for you. What 
use have I for them ? I eat as you eat, sleep as you 
sleep. Nay, indeed, my fare is simpler than that of many 
of your self-indulgent ones. I often sit up at night, I 
know, to watch for you, that you may sleep in quiet. 

11 Or will any one say that while you endured privation 
and toil I did not ? Who of you can say that he has 
suffered more for me than I for him ? Come now, who 
of you has wounds, let him bare himself and show them, 
and I will show mine. No member of my body is with- 
out its wound. No kind of weapon whose scars I do not 
bear. I have been wounded by the sword, by the arrow 
from the bow, by the missile from the catapult; I have 
been pelted with stones and pounded with clubs, while 
leading you to victory and to glory and to plenty, through 
all the land and the sea, across all the rivers and the 
mountains and the plains. I have wedded like as you 
have wedded. Your children will, many of them, be 
akin to mine. Those of you who have debts have I re- 
lieved from debt without inquiring how, despite abundant 
pay and richer booty, you acquired them. Golden 
crowns have been awarded as the imperishable memories 
of your bravery and my esteem. To those who have 
died all the honours of war have been paid. Their graves 
are nobly marked. Statues of bronze rise for them in 
their native cities. Their children, freed from the 



484 Alexander the Great. [324 B.C. 

burdens of taxation, enjoy the civic honours. And no 
man under my leading has fallen in flight. 

11 And now I was minded to send to your homes such 
of you as were no longer fit for war, and to make you 
shine in the eyes of men. But you all wish to leave 
me. Then get you gone! Go home and tell them that 
your King Alexander, who conquered the Persians and 
the Medes and the Bactrians, who brought beneath his 
sway the' Uxians, the Arachotians, and the Drangians, 
who carried his arms to the shores of the Caspian, passed 
the Caucasus, crossed the Oxus, the Tanais, and the 
Indus, who penetrated unto the Great Sea, marched 
through the deserts of Gedrosia, and took possession of 
Carmania — go tell that after he had brought you back to 
Susa you deserted him, and left him to the protection of 
the conquered foreigners. Mayhap this report of yours 
will appear glorious in the eyes of men, and righteous in 
the sight of the gods. Get you gone! " 

Alexander turned abruptly and retired into his 
palace. None but his immediate staff attended 
him. The soldiers stood there still in dazed silence. 
They were without counsel. No man knew which 
way to turn. So that day passed, and the next. 
No word came from the palace. No one had seen 
Alexander. No one had been admitted to audience. 
Then on the third day came the news that the chief 
commands were being assigned to Persians and 
Medes, that new regiments of foreign troops were 
being organised to replace the old — a Persian foot- 
guard, Persian cavalry companions. They could 
no longer restrain themselves. Running in a body 
to the palace, they cast their arms upon the ground, 



324 B.C.] At Susa and Opis. 485 

threw themselves as suppliants beside them, and 
humbly called upon their master, beseeching him to 
show his face and have pity upon them. And then 
he forgave them, and the reconciliation was sealed 
in one great love-feast, whereat Persian and Mace- 
donian sat down together in peace, and the King 
and his guests dipped wine from the same mixer and 
joined in pouring the same libations, and Grecian 
and Magian priests invoked the blessings of the 
gods together. 

So the last effort of the old Macedonian spirit to 
assert itself settled away in failure. The person- 
ality of the King had been the one controlling factor 
in the result. Ten thousand men were now sent 
back home, each having received a talent in addition 
to full pay. Craterus, who was sent back home with 
them in command, was commissioned to succeed 
Antipater in the government of Macedonia, Thrace, 
Thessaly, and Epirus, while Antipater was ordered 
to come with fresh troops into Asia. This inter- 
change had its political purpose in the interest of 
the new internationalism, and even the ten thousand 
were missionaries of the new gospel. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER. 
323 B.C. 

THE return of Alexander from the far East be- 
gan now to make itself felt among the old 
Greek states. The arrival of the absconding 
treasurer Harpalus, in the early summer (324 B.C.), 
was the first symptom, and the long investigation 
conducted by the Areopagite court dragged on till 
December, forming a leading subject of the local 
gossip. 

In July Nicanor, as special ambassador, had ap- 
peared at the Olympic festival with a proclamation 
from the King recommending the various states to 
restore to citizenship all those who had been ban- 
ished for political reasons. Twenty thousand of 
such unfortunates are said to have been assembled 
at the festival to hail the proclamation with their 
plaudits. 

This, too, was a movement toward the opening 
of a new political era. It not only signified the can- 
celling of accounts inherited from the old regime, 

486 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 487 

but it was sure to add in all the cities a considerable 
and an influential contingent to the body of those 
who sympathised with Alexander and the new 
regime. 

Most of the cities acceded readily to the request, 
but at Athens it started up much bubbling in the 
political pot. So did also the movement started by 
monarchical enthusiasts in various cities for award- 
ing divine honours to the King. There is no sound 
reason for supposing that this movement originated 
in a decree or proclamation from the throne: had 
there been such a proclamation we should have 
heard of it through some other source than the 
fable-loving yElian of the second century A.D. Cer- 
tainly nothing like the establishment of an Alexan- 
der cult was at that time intended by anyone, and 
there are no traces of any such thing until long after 
his death. That the idea appealed in any wise to 
the century after him is to be attributed to the 
paling of interest in the gods of the old city system, 
and the yearning for a broader and higher basis of 
confidence and reverence — a yearning which sought 
its satisfaction in adoration of the state, the magni- 
fied /><?/z>, whose representatives and first citizens " 
the old-time gods had been, In obedience to this 
instinct the head of Alexander, decked with the 
lion-skins of Heracles or the horns of Ammon, ap- 
peared as the genius of the state upon the coinage 
of his successors, in place of the old gods who typi- 
fied the city-state, and set the fashion for all the 
coinage of the Western world from that day to this. 
So the way was prepared for the later worship of the 



488 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

genius of the Roman Empire, out of which Christ- 
ianity, with its theory of the carnal body and the 
divine spirit, and its recognition of a kingdom of 
heaven as well as of this world, and of the duty to 
render not only unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, 
but unto God that which is God's, created a Holy 
Roman Empire, with its dualism of state, which is 
body, and church, which is soul. 

From Opis Alexander went to Ecbatana, where 
his friend Hephaestion fell sick of fever and died, 
and was mourned by him and buried, as Patroclus 
by Achilles. In the spring of 323 B.C., after spend- 
ing the winter in subduing the unruly mountain 
tribes of the Cossaeans and Uxians, he marched to- 
ward Babylon, and rejecting the warnings of the 
Chaldean priests, who said that mischief awaited 
him, he entered the city. Already on his march 
embassies had come to meet him from distant peo- 
ples, — the Libyans, the Bruttians, Lucanians, and 
Etruscans, — for already the shadow of surmise con- 
cerning his ambitions had fallen upon the far West. 

On his arrival in the city delegations from many 
Greek cities awaited him, with testimonials, crowns, 
and felicitations. Some brought him, too, special 
appeals for favour, and laid before him as court of 
highest resort questions of internal politics and order 
to settle. These were busy days, but in the midst 
of it all he found time to discuss and introduce 
radical changes in the tactics of the army, to initiate 
on a large scale a reconstruction of the canal system 
in the marshes about Babylon, and also to arrange 
in detail a plan for the conquest and occupation of 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 489 

Arabia. This last involved the building of a fleet 
and the sending out of parties for preliminary ex- 
ploration. Earlier he had sent Heraclides into 
Hyrcania, with orders there to build a fleet and ex- 
plore the Caspian. 

This betrays a plan, of which we have other * 
indications also, to take up the work he had aban- 
doned at the Danube and again at the Jaxartes, 
subjugate the Scythians, and join his empire to- 
gether at the north. Nowhere do we find, however, 
safe evidence of any immediate plan of wider and 
all-embracing conquest. The after-world easily 
dreamed him such plans, but he himself, if we may 
judge by what men who knew him said, and by the 
things he actually did, had no formulated plan 
further than to join into one empire, as a consoli- 
dated whole, the Europe of his knowledge and the 
realm of Darius, and to round this out by filling the 
gap between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea with 
Arabia, and the gap between the Jaxartes and the 
Danube with Scythia. 

By the end of May (323 B.C.) fleet and army were 
ready for the expedition to the Arabian coast. On 
the morning of June 2 the King fell sick. A part 
of the night before, and all of the preceding night, 
he had spent in drinking and merrymaking at the 
house of Medius the Thessalian. On returning 
home the second night " he bathed, took a little 
food, and slept where he was, because he felt a 
little feverish "; so we have it on the authority of 
the Court Journal, from which Plutarch and Arrian 

*Arrian, iv., 15, 6. 



490 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

freely cite in giving their accounts of the illness. 
He was carried out on his couch to offer the wonted 
morning sacrifice, then lay all day indisposed in the 
great hall of the palace, but able still to give in- 
structions to his officers and appoint the departure 
of the army for the 5th of June, and of the fleet, 
which he intended to accompany, for the 6th. In 
the evening he went by boat to the gardens across 
the river, there bathed and slept. The next day 
(June 3) he bathed, offered the morning sacrifices, 
chatted and played dice with Medius awhile, sent 
orders to his generals to meet the next day at day- 
break. He was feeling better; but the fearful 
swamp-fever of Babylon was in his veins, and he 
was deceived. That night the fever raged the night 
through. In the morning (June 4), after bath and 
sacrifice, he conferred with Nearchus and other 
officers of the fleet, and charged them to be ready 
to start on the day after the next, for he counted 
on being well enough to set out at the appointed 
time. The fever steadily increased. On the 8th it 
assumed a dangerous form. The generals were now 
ordered to remain in constant attendance in the 
hall, the captains before the palace gates. He 
recognised his generals, but was unable to speak. 
Thus far he had offered the daily sacrifice ; after this 
day he was no longer able to. Two days before he 
had discontinued the baths. No hint is given us of 
any treatment employed by the physicians. Years 
later the story gained currency, and has since been 
repeated by ancient and modern writers, that 
he was poisoned; but medical experts who have 



323 B.c.J The Death of Alexander. 49 t 

reviewed the symptoms so explicitly stated in the 
record of the Ephemerides, or Court Journal, have 
no hesitation in asserting that poisoning was out of 
the question, and that the disease was certainly a 
fever. There is no allusion in any way to localised 
pain or inflammation. While his excesses of the 
two nights preceding the attack had undoubtedly 
made him physically less capable of resisting dis- 
ease, the story of his having died from the results 
of hard drinking is another form of canard. 

His condition passed steadily from worse to worse. 
In his environment hope gave place to panic. On 
the 1 2th rumour spread among the soldiers that he 
was dead. Some believed his body-guards were 
concealing ;he fact for a purpose. They surrounded 
the palace, demanding admittance. Even when con- 
vinced that he was still living, they insisted they 
must see him once more. They forced their way 
through the gates. Grief and love were their ex- 
cuse. In awe-struck quiet the rude old soldiers filed 
through the room where he lay. He stretched out 
his hand to each of them, feebly raised his head a 
little, and spoke with his eyes his farewell. 

Toward evening of the next day, June 13, 323 
B.C., he died, thirty-two years and eight months of 
age, having reigned twelve years and ten months. 
He left no testament, and, except for the unborn 
child of Roxane, no heir. His friends, who in his 
last moments pressed him to tell them to whom he 
left the throne, caught only the whispered words, 
" To the best man." This was the test his own 
claim of leadership had stood. 



49^ Alexander the Gi r eat. [323 B.C. 

Over city and camp there rested the stillness of 
death. Doubt, terror, dismay, swallowed up grief. 
For the moment the pulse of the world stood still. 
The empire of the world lay there soulless and in 
swoon. Alexander had been its soul, but Alexander 
was gone from among the living. The King was 
dead, but no man cried, " Long live the King! " 

There was no lawful heir. Heracles, the son of 
Barsine, Memnon's widow, whom Alexander had 
taken from among the spoiled at Issus, could not 
count as such. Except for the unborn child of 
Roxane, no other could claim to be of Alexander's 
seed. Nearest of kin was the feeble-minded Ar- 
rhidseus, Philip's son by the Thessalian Philinna, 
and so half-brother of Alexander. This was all that 
the principle of legitimacy had to offer wherewith 
to awake the empire into life again. 

On the other side stood military power, embodied 
in the leaders of the army — all picked men, and 
tried, all noblemen as well as generals, any one of 
whom might have given the empire life, could he 
only command the allegiance of the rest. But that 
was out of the question. From the first council 
meeting their views went wide asunder. Ptolemy, 
at one extreme, argued for a division of the empire 
among the generals ; Meleager, at the other, called 
for the immediate recognition of Heracles or Ar- 
rhidaeus as King. He would not await the birth of 
Roxane's child. Roxane was an Asiatic. The child 
might be a girl. Meleager spoke the feeling of the ul- 
tra-Macedonian legitimists. They wanted a king and 
that a Macedonian. But it was another proposition, 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 493 

that of Perdiccas, which prevailed. Perdiccas, 
since Hephaestion's death, had been chief of staff; 
he held the insignia of royalty and the signet-ring, 
and was for the time the most influential of the 
generals. He proposed to await the birth of 
Roxane's child, and if it were a son to proclaim 
him King. Meanwhile four men, Perdiccas, Leon- 
natus, Antipater, and Craterus, with Perdiccas at 
the head, were to constitute a board of regency. 
This the nobility, represented by the cayalry, ac- 
cepted ; but when the yeomanry of the phalanx 
heard of it, their loyalty to the monarchical idea 
took offense. They scented in the scheme a return 
to the rule of the barons. The army was rent in 
twain. The monarchical infantry proclaimed Ar- 
rhidaeus, under the name of Philip, King. The 
aristocratic cavalry, forced to withdraw from the 
city, stood threateningly before its gates; but be- 
fore blood was shed a compromise was effected, in 
which the influence of Perdiccas again reasserted 
itself. The cavalry and the nobles agreed on their 
part to recognise Philip-Arrhidaeus as King, stipulat- 
ing only that in case Roxane should bear a son he 
should also receive recognition as King. The 
phalanx in its turn accepted the rule of the gen- 
erals, with Perdiccas as regent. The empire was to 
be divided into satrapies among the great captains. 
From that day the principle of legitimacy got no 
more than formal hearing. A month later Roxane 
bore a son, and he was duly proclaimed King, with 
the name Alexander. So there were two kings, one 
a half-wit, one an infant, both under the care of 



494 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

Perdiccas, and later, after his downfall and death 
(321 B.C.) under that of Antipater. After the death 
of this faithful old regent (319 B.C.) both fell upon 
troublous times. Their kingship had never been 
more than an empty name, and they but meaning- 
less insignia passed from hand to hand in the melee 
of politics and civil war. Both came to their death 
by violence, Arrhidaeus, with Eurydice, his Queen, 
in 317 B.C., by order of Olympias, Alexander's 
mother, and the little Alexander, together with 
Roxane, in 311 B.C., by order of Cassander. Olym- 
pias had already met a like fate five years before. 
An attempt to use the name of Heracles, Barsine's 
son, for political effect, brought him, too, and his 
mother, in 309 B.C., to their end, and so the line of 
Alexander perished from off the earth. 

But in Alexander's line had never lain the hope 
of continuing his empire. The King had died too 
young. The achievements of the army were too 
recent. The visible forms of power rested still in 
the arm of military force. The only hope lay in the 
predominance of one of the generals over the others. 
For a while it seemed that Perdiccas might be that 
one; again it was Antigonus, again Seleucus. But 
each one whetted the sword against the other, and 
the empire went down in a tangle of strife and car- 
nage. With the close of the century, and the issue 
of the battle of Ipsus (301 B.C.), it had resolved 
itself into four well-ascertained domains — Syria and 
Babylonia under Seleucus, Egypt under Ptolemy, 
Thrace and Asia Minor under Lysimachus, Mace- 
donia and Greece under Cassander. Twenty-five 



3 2 3 B , c .] The Dea th of A lex a n der. 495 

years later the portion of Lysimachus had disap- 
peared before the cyclone of the Celtic incursions, 
and three great kingdoms survived. So in substance 
the ruins remained until the consuls and the legions 
came, and unity again emerged under the name and 
the standards of Rome. 

Surely if we estimate in terms of external organi- 
sation, Alexander's empire had perished with him. 
His head appears on coins, his name and his memory 
were abundantly conjured with, but within ten years 
after his death all serious purpose of restoring the 
structure to unity had shifted into mere political 
pretence. If a man's life-work is to be judged only 
by what he erects into formal organisation, then we 
must pronounce the career of Alexander a failure, 
and more than a failure. He had dismantled what 
he found, and built nothing sure in its place. His 
dream of fusing the East and the West had been 
fulfilled and embodied in no visible institution, no 
form of government or law, of state or church. 
Greece, Egypt, and the Orient were still in govern- 
ment asunder. 

No wonder that historians have written the story 
of Greece — among them great names like Niebuhr 
and Grote — and seen nothing more in the career of 
Alexander than a brilliant disturbance of the world's 
order, an enthronement of militarism, an annihilation 
of Greek liberty, and an undoing of Greece in all 
that makes her life of interest to the world. It is 
another thing that their blindness could see in Alex- 
ander himself only a mad opportunist and greedy 
conqueror, whose life, had it been spared, could 



496 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

have wrought no more than further conquest; for 
Alexander was of all things an idealist, and they 
who have not read that in the story of his life 
may as well not have read it at all. Grote set him- 
self to write the achievements of the Greek demo- 
cracies. In the life of the free city Greek life had 
for him attained its consummation. What came 
after this in the maturing of history was to his eyes 
destruction, and not development. Alexander and 
the Macedonians were the agents of destruction, 
and in them could be found no good thing. Grote, 
looking through the eyes of Demosthenes, and cap- 
tivated by the brilliancies of a single form of life 
and a single set of institutions, under a single class 
of conditions, assigned to them an absolute validity 
for all conditions. Grote and Demosthenes are each 
in his way types of historians and statesmen who 
have spent their strength in deploring the waste of 
goodly seed-corn scattered on the fields, their eyes 
turned toward the former harvest, not the next. 
The old maxims, the old creeds, and the good old 
times are reasserted, defended, and bewailed long 
after they have passed to their larger fruitage in the 
unfolding of a* larger life. 

In the five years that elapsed between Alexander's 
accession to the Macedonian throne and his entrance 
into Babylon (331 B.C.) the world had passed from 
one harvest-time to another, but most men knew it 
not. In the year 330 B.C. all Athens was assembled 
in the theatre, hanging upon the words of Demos- 
thenes and ^Eschines as they fought their famous 
duel De Corona; but the issues with which the 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 497 

orators dealt were all six years old, some of them 
sixteen. The Athens in which these issues had 
been vital had long since gone forth from its narrow 
plain into the larger world. Nothing is surer evi- 
dence thereof than the sight of these men playing 
with the shards of an empty tomb. 

When Alexander's career began, the culture of 
the world, fixed in two main types, the feminine 
and the masculine, if we may broadly characterise 
them so, was still centralised and located, on the 
one hand in the wealth and settled industrial life of 
the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian river valleys, 
on the other in the free energy of the old Greek city 
communities. When his career ended, the barrier 
separating these domains had been broken down, 
never to be raised again. 

When Alexander came upon the scene, Greece 
was still the old Greece, the composite of autono- 
mous cities and cantons. In this form it was past 
the bloom, and was ripening to seed. All that the 
little communities could accomplish for history 
through living for themselves had been accom- 
plished. In the miniature life of their isolated 
valleys, opening to the sea, they had developed a 
social system in which, as individual achievement 
directly counted, and individual responsibility was 
directly assessed, personality gathered to itself un- 
wonted consciousness of power. So it was that 
here man first, as it were, discovered himself — first 
saw with clearness the power and the right of the 
free human soul. Man as a base-line for measuring 

the universe, man as a source of governing power, 
32 



498 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

arose in Greece ; it was Greece that shaped the law 
of beauty from which came the arts of form, the 
law of speculative truth from which by ordered ob- 
servations came the sciences, and the law of liberty 
from which came the democratic state. This was 
what the old Greece held in keeping for the world. 
Alexander was the strong wind that scattered the 
seed ; again, he was the willing hand of the sower. 
When he planted seventy cities of the Greek type 
on Oriental soil he acted with plan and purpose. 
The city was Hellenism in the concrete. As a prin- 
ciple of social order, Hellenism was the government 
of communities of men located in territory, and the 
source of authority was from within; Orientalism 
was the government of territory in which lived men, 
and the source of authority was from without. 

In the centuries following Alexander the urban 
life, based on the Greek, gradually sought its centres 
outside the old limits of Greece, in the domain of a 
greater world. Alexandria, Rhodes, Pergamon, 
Antioch, Byzantium, instead of Athens, became its 
representatives. The forms of Greek culture, which 
were transmitted direct to the after-world through 
Rome, were those which lived here in the greater 
Greece. Until modern scholarship tunnelled a route 
back to the Old Greece, it was the taste and the in- 
tellectual interests of Alexandria, rather than those 
of Athens, that passed current as Greek. In the 
New Greece the culture of the Old assumed a world- 
form, and prepared itself for universal extension. 

The dialects of cantons shrank back before a uni- 
versal type of standard Greek, the lingua franca of 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 499 

the Levant. Local citizenship slowly yielded to a 
sense for citizenship of the world, and cosmopolitan- 
ism was born. The worship of the old city gods, 
based on community of blood, gave place to a yearn- 
ing for something that might symbolise the higher 
unity of human life. The old cities had passed over 
into the life of a greater whole, but this was as yet 
without body, and, except for the vision and type 
of a deified Alexander, without expression or sym- 
bol. It remained for Rome to satisfy the instinct 
of the times. Its deified emperors replaced the 
Alexander type, and with the acceptance of Christ- 
ianity a Holy Roman Empire, joined of body and 
soul, arose to claim the larger allegiance of men, — 
prototype of which had been the old allegiance to 
the Greek cities, now melted and dissolved in the 
fluid of the state. 

The existence of Christianity as the embodiment 
of the higher life of European civilisation is the 
best evidence of the reality and permanence of 
Alexander's empire. Religion is always in antiquity 
a surer guide to the real conditions of nationality 
than is political organisation. Christianity as a sys- 
tem, and as the historian sees it, is a pure and simple 
expression of Alexander's world. Its inner life, its 
heart, is of the East ; its philosophical organisation, 
its brain, is Greek. It blended Jew and Gentile in a 
brotherhood larger than that bond of blood and tribe 
which the mixing of the peoples had annulled. 

In Christian Europe of to-day the domain of Pro- 
testantism represents the individualism of the North- 
folk* the domain of Roman Catholicism marks the 



500 Alexander the Great. [323 B.C. 

limits of the Roman Empire; the domain of the 
Eastern Church, the sphere of influence of ancient 
Greece and Byzantium. In Asia and Africa Mo- 
hammedanism holds the ground overrun by the 
Macedonian arms, and the frontiers of its predomi- 
nance to the east are those of Alexander's empire, 
from the Jaxartes to the Indus. Beyond there is 
another world, another order of life and thought. 
Though Islam is an after-growth of Orientalism, it 
bears in its fibre the evidence that Western spirit 
once helped till the soil whereon it grew. 

The seed-ground of European civilisation was 
neither Greece nor the Orient, but a world joined 
of the two. Most of the settled types of thought 
and things that go to make up the culture life of the 
West here acquired their outline form. Through 
the whole range from the species and varieties of 
cultivated trees and garden fruits to the forms and 
methods of industrial art, the standards of taste, the 
moulds of civic and social life, the categories of liter- 
ary form, the ordered schemes for conduct, thought, 
and faith — in them all the creation of the types and 
the first selection of the standards were the handi- 
work of this old-time larger world of men. Into this 
world we must take them back to find in true per- 
spective their motive and their meaning. It was a 
world in which the dawning instinct of cosmopoli- 
tanism first shaped provincial and domestic products 
to the universal use of men. 

The story of Alexander has become a story of 
death. He died himself before his time. With his 
life he brought the Old Greece to its end ; with his 



323 B.C.] The Death of Alexander. 501 

death the state he had founded. But they all three, 
Alexander, Greece, the Grand Empire, each after 
its sort, set forth, as history judges men and things, 
the inner value of the saying, " Except a grain of 
wheat faM into the earth and die, it abideth alone." 



INDEX 



Abdera, special tribute to Persia, 

198 
Abisares, ally of Porus at Hyda- 
spes, 438 ; submits to Alexan- 
der, 449 
Abreas, in an attack on a city of 

the Mallians, 457 ff. 
Acarnania, joins Athens, 68 
Achaia, joins Athens, 68 
Achilles's tomb, Alexander at, 21 5 
Ada, queen of Caria, submits to 
Alexander, 244 ; appointed 
viceroy of Caria, 247 
Admetus, commander of hypas- 

pisls at Tyre, 321 
^gse, early capital of Macedo- 
nia, 8 ; marriage of Alexan- 
der's sister and King of Epirus 
at, 77 
^Egina, commercial superior of 

Athens, 84 
^ropus, King of Macedonia, T50 
^Eschines, age at birth of Alex- 
ander, 3 ; escapes conviction 
at Athens, 67 ; member of 
Athenian embassy to Philip, 
72 ; leader of Macedonian 
party, 125, 126 ; causes war to 
be declared against Amphissa, 
147 ; taunts Demosthenes, 
281 ; taunted by the anti-Ma- 
cedonians, 296 ; suit against 



Ctesiphon, 447 ; contest with 

Demosthenes, De Corona, 496 

^Eschylus, Aristotle's neglect of, 

43 

^Etolia, under control of Philip, 

145 ; throws off Macedonian 

authority, 153 

Agathon at court of Archelaus, 16 

Agathon, brother of Parme- 

nion, 388 
Ag<?ma, the cavalry ag/ma, 215 ; 

the infantry age'ma, 217 

Agis, king of Sparta, at Siph- 

nus, 281, 297, 298; raises a 

revolt against Alexander in 

the Peloponnesus, 345 ; slain 

before Megalopolis, 346 

Ahura Mazda religion, the, 202^. 

Akuphis, welcomes Alexander in 

India, 427 
Alcimachus, aids in the reduc- 
tion of Asia Minor, 234 
Alexander the Great. 

Before his accession : Birth, 
2, 8 ; lineage, 3 ; parents, 
4 ; the taming of Bucepha- 
lus, 26 ff.; relations with 
Aristotle, 33 ff., see Aris- 
totle ; affairs with Apelles, 
41 ff.; subdues tribe on 
upper Strymon, 64 ; at 
Chseronea, 69 ; peace com- 
missioner at Athens, 72 ff.; 
quarrel with Philip, 74 ff: 



503 



504 



Index. 



Alexander the Great — Cont'd. 
returns to Pella, 76 ; goes to 
Epirus and Illyria, 76 ; con- 
nected with Philip's death, 
79 ; accession to the throne, 
148 ; claim to succession 
challenged, 150 

First campaign in Greece : 
Sets forth into Greece, 152 ; 
enters Thessaly, 154; recog- 
nised by Amphictyonic 
Council, 155 ; encamps be- 
fore Thebes, 155 ; treatment 
of the disaffected states, 156; 
proclaimed military leader 
of the Hellenic Empire, 
156 ; at Corinth, 157 ; with 
Diogenes, 53, 157 ; at Del- 
phi, 158 ; returns to Mace- 
donia, 158 

In Thrace and Illyria : Sets 
out from Amphipolis against 
the Triballi, 159 ; battle at 
the summit of the Hsemus, 

161 ; defeats the Triballi, 

162 ; crosses the Danube 
and defeats the Getse, 162 ; 
wins the vassalage of tribes 
north of the Danube, 163 ; 
catechises the Celts, 164 ; 
burns Pelion in Illyria, 
165 ; reported in Greece to 
be dead, 166 

Second campaign in Greece : 
Revolt of Thebes, see 
Thebes, revolt of ; reenters 
Bceotia, 171 ; later regrets 
his treatment of Thebes, 
176 ; receives Athenian em- 
bassy, 177 ; terms with 
Athens, 178 ff.; master of 
Greece, 179 

Advance into Asia : The odds, 
208 ; his army, 208 ff.; his 
resources, 209 ; Antipater 
left in Macedonia, 212 ; sets 
out from Pella, 213 ; crosses 
to the plain of Troy, 213 ; 
visits the tomb of Achilles, 
44, 215 ; his army, its num- 



bers, and organisation, 215 
ff.; at Granicus, see Grani- 
cus 

In Lydia and Caria : Enters 
Sardis, 230 ; at Ephesus, 
232 ff.; at Miletus, see Mi- 
letus ; at Halicarnassus, 
244 ff. 

In Central Asia Minor : Sends 
home the benedicts of his 
army, 248 ; enters Lycia, 
249 ; sends half his army into 
winter quarters, 249; receives 
submission of the cities of 
Lycia, 250 ; discovery of 
a Lyncestian plot against 
Alexander, 251 ; passage 
around Mt. Climax, 253 ; at 
Perge, 254 ; at Termessus, 
255 ; at Sagalassus, 256 ; at 
Celaenae, 257 ; at Gordium, 
258 ; orders collection of 
fleet in the Hellespont, 264 ; 
leaves Gordium, 265 ; hears 
of Darius's advance, 274 ; 
at Ancyra, 275 ; sets out for 
Cilicia, 275 

In Cilicia : 111 at Tarsus, 275 ; 
passes the gates of Cilicia, 
275 ; occupies Anchialus and 
Solce, 278 ; at Mallus, 279 ; 
at Myriandrus, 279 

At Issus : See Issus 

In Syria : At Marathus, 304 ; 
reply to Darius's embassy, 
305 ; surrender of Byblus 
and Sidon, 307 ; at Tyre, 
see Tyre ; takes Gaza, 325 
ff.; wounded at Gaza, 325 ; 
receives tidings from Greece, 
326 ; at Jerusalem, 326 ; ad- 
vance on Egypt, 326 

In Egypt : At Pelusium, 332 ; 
at Heliopolis, 333 ; at Mem- 
phis, see Memphis ; influ- 
ence of Egyptian religion 
on Alexander, 334 ; leaves 
his army at Memphis, 335 ; 
determines to build a city 
on the Mareotis Lake, 336 ; 



Index. 



505 



Alexander the Great — Cont'd. 
marks out the plan for Alex- 
andria, 340, 342 ; receives 
news of the dispersion of 
the Persian fleet, 344; at 
Cyrene, 347 ; visit to the 
temple of Jupiter Ammon, 
see Ammon ; receives a 
Greek delegation at Mem- 
phis, 354 ; organises the 
government, 354 

At Gaugamela (Arbela) : See 
Gaugamela. 

Occupation of Persia : At 
Babylon, 369 ; at Susa, 370 ; 
burns the palace at Persepo- 
lis, 370 ; at Ecbatana, see 
Ecbatana ; dismissal of the 
Greek allies at Ecbatana, 
375 ; pursuit of Darius, 376 
ff; captures Darius's body, 
381 ; at the Caspian, 383 ; 
in Hyrcania, 383^". 

In Afghanistan (Drangiana, 
Bactria) : Enters Drangiana, 
387 ff.; conspiracy against 
his life, 387 ff.; at the torture 
of Philotas, 392; marches 
towards Bactria, 393 ; at the 
Oxus, 394 ; captures Bessus, 
395 ; subjugates the coun- 
try, 396 

In Bokhara (Sogdiana) : At 
the Jaxartes, 398 ; defeats 
the Scythians, 399 ; defeats 
Spitamenes, 402 ; secures 
Spitamenes's death, 403 ; 
murder of Clitus, 403 ff.; 
imprisons Callisthenes, 411 ; 
marries Roxane, 412 

In India : The army, 424 ; 
along the Choaspes, 426 ; 
takes Massaga, 427 ; wel- 
comed by King Akuphis, 
4©7 ; takes a citadel on the 
Indus, \"2&ff.; welcomed by 
Taxiles, 434 ; at the battle 
of the Hydaspes, see Hyda- 
spes ; conquests in the Pen- 
jab 449^./ preparations for 



his voyage down the Indus, 
449 ; at the Hypasis, 453 ; 
determines to return, 454 ; 
returns to the Hydaspes, 
454 ; sails down the Hyda- 
spes, 455 ; takes a city of the 
Mallians, 457 ff.; seriously 
wounded, 458^. 

Return to Persia : On the In- 
dus, 463 ; march along the 
Gedrosian coast, 465 ff.; in 
Carmania, 467 ; rejoined by 
Nearchus, 469 ; reaches 
Susa, 470 ; condition of em- 
pire on his return, 470; 
reorganises the empire, 471 

At Susa and Opis : Marries 
Statira at Susa, 476 ; pay- 
ment of the debts of the 
soldiers, 479 ; reorganisation 
of the army, 479 ; mutiny of 
the Macedonians at Opis, 
481 ff.; speech to the mu- 
tinous Macedonians, 482^". 

At Babylon : Preparation for 
the departure of the fleet to 
Arabia, 489 ff.; falls ill, 
489 ; death, 491 ; character 
and effects of his career, 
496 

Characteristics : Inherited 
characteristics, 5 ; temperate 
in eating and drinking, 22 ; 
needed guidance, not au- 
thority, 24 ; eager for action, 
29 ; passionate and impuls- 
ive, 30 ; influence of edu- 
cation, 32 ; influence of 
Aristotle upon, 32, 40, 46, 
47 ; aversion to athletics, 
40 ff.; delight in Homer, 
\3ff.; moral ideals, doff.; 
religious attitude, 63 ; gen- 
erosity shown at Granicus, 
224 ; virtues, 227 ; physi- 
cal appearance, 228 ff.; be- 
ginning of the change to 
Persian ideals, 268 ; nobility 
shown in his treatment of 
Darius's family, 299 ; effect 



506 



Index. 



Alexander the Great — Cont V. 
of the visit to Ammon, 349 
ff.; confidence in a divine 
origin, 350 ; tolerance of 
divine honours paid himself, 
352 ; new cosmopolitanism, 
352 ; growth of his ambi- 
tion, 373 ff.; adoption of 
Oriental ways, 388 ; charac- 
ter shown in the murder of 
Clitus, 407 ; purpose in life, 
413 ; loved by his soldiers, 
458^"./ exposure of self in 
battle, 462 ; later ideas of 
empire, 473 
Education and attainments : 
Elementary education, 19 
ff.; attainments in arts, 41; 
literary training, 42; higher 
education, 48 ff.; know- 
ledge of mathematics, 48 ; 
knowledge of natural his- 
tory, 49 ; knowledge of 
medicine, 49 ; knowledge 
of rhetoric, 50 ff.; adroit- 
ness in repartee, 52 ; know- 
ledge of dialectics, 53 ; 
knowledge of philosophy, 
54 ; instruction in ethics, 
55 ff' 3 as a philosopher, 
58 if. 
Alexander's heir, absence of a 

good claimant, 492 
Alexander cult, the, 353, 487 
Alexander II., king of Macedo- 
nia, 17 
Alexander, a Lyncestian prince, 
recognises Alexander as king, 
151 ; plot against Alexander, 
251 ; seized and put under 
guard, 252 ; put to death, 253 
Alexander, son of Roxane, pro- 
claimed king, 493 ; death, 494 
Alexander the Philhellene, com- 
petitor at Olympian games, 
14 ff- 
Alexander, tyrant of Pherse, as- 
sassinated, 141 
Alexandria, growth and history, 
337 ; a centre of learning, 



340 ; description of, 340 ; 
starts on her commercial ca- 
reer, 448 

Alexandria-Areion, founded by 
Alexander, 386 

Alexandria-Eschata, founded by 
Alexander, 399 

Alexandria in India, two cities of 
the name, 463 

Alexandria - under -Caucasus, 
founded by Alexander, 425 

Amasis, 337 

Ambracia, occupied by Macedo- 
nian garrison, 74 

Ambraciotes, the, throw off Ma- 
cedonian authority, 153 

Ammon, Alexander's visit to the 
temple of, MSff.; Alexander's 
journey to, 347 ; Alexander 
consults the oracle, 348 ; effect 
of the response on Alexander, 
349 ff- 

Amphictyonic Council, the, 
Philip becomes a member of, 
65 ; the supreme tribunal of 
the Hellenic league, 74 ; war 
declared against Amphissa, 
147 ; origin and influence, 155 

Amphictyonies, the, 112 

Amphipolis, occupied by Philip, 

3 

Amphissa, attempts to instigate 
war against Athens, 147 

Amphoterus, sent to collect a 

• fleet, 264 

Amyntas, father of Alexander 
the Philhellene, 15 

Amyntas, king of Macedonia, 
17 

Amyntas, son of Perdiccas, 
claims of, to the throne, 150 
ff.; death, 151 

Amyntas, a Macedonian officer, 
slain at Thebes, 170 

Amyntas, at Granicus, 219 ; ad- 
vice to Darius before Issus, 
282 ; leads the retreat at Issus, 
292 ; acquitted of the charge 
of conspiracy against Alexan- 
der, 392 ; in Bactria, 424 



Index. 



507 



Anabasis of Xenophon, the, its 
influence on Alexander, 210 

Animal History, work by Aris- 
totle, 49 

Antalcidas, the peace of, 139 

Antigenes, Macedonian infantry 
commander, 464 

Antigonus, appointed governor 
of Phrygia, 258 

Anti-Macedonian party, situa- 
tion precedent to, 125 ; forms 
at Athens, 142 ; alliance rees- 
tablished between Athens and 
Byzantium, Rhodes, and 
Chios, 146 ; Eubcea united in 
an anti-Macedonian league, 
146 

Antipater, friend of Aristotle, 
39 J goes on a peace commis- 
sion to Athens, 72 ; proves 
loyal to Alexander, 151 ; re- 
gent in Macedonia, 212 ; or- 
dered to collect a fleet, 265 ; 
quells an Illyrian revolt, 345 ; 
reduces Sparta, 346 ; position 
in Macedonia, 470 ; ordered 
to come to Asia, 485 ; regent 
after Alexander's death, 493 ; 
guardian of Roxane's son, 
494; death, 494 

Antistius, courier of Alexander, 
83 (foot-note) 

Apelles, affair with Alexander, 
41 ff.; portrays Alexander, 
228 

Apis, the, honoured by Alexan- 
der at Memphis, 334 

Arabia, special tribute to Persia, 
198 

Arbela, battle of, see Gaugamela ; 
ratio of lost in the battle of, 
302 

Archelaus, king of Macedonia, 
16 

Aretis, Alexander's aide at Gran- 
icus, 221 

Argeadae, the royal family of 
Macedon, 14 

Argos, under Philip's influence, 
66, 67 ; the plain of, 85 ; 



throws off Macedonian author- 
ity. *53 I population, 338 

Ariobarzanes, 370 

Aristander, the prophet, before 
Gaugamela, 360, 363 

Aristarchus, 353 

Aristobulus, studies in natural 
history, 49 ; biographer of 
Alexander, 275 

Aristotle, age at birth of Alexan- 
der, 3 ; Alexander's tutor, 
24 ; comes to Macedonia, 
33 ff- » l et t er from Philip, 33 ; 
teaches at Mieza, 34, 35 ; re- 
moves to Athens, 35 ; corre- 
spondence with Alexander, 37; 
collections of animal life, 37 ; 
estranged from Alexander, 38 ; 
influence on Alexander, 39^"., 
46, 47 ; forced to quit Athens, 
39 ; education of Alexander, 
48 ff.; Animal History, 49 ; 
medicine, 49 ; rhetoric, 50 ; 
philosophy, 54 ; ethics, 55 

Armenia, tribute to Persia, 199 

Army of Alexander, recruitment, 
208 ff.; reliability, 210 ; or- 
ganisation, 215 ff.; order of 
battle, 217 ; reorganised at 
Susa, 479 • 

Arrhidasus, son of Philip, claim- 
ant for throne, 492; proclaimed 
king by the infantry, 493 ; 
death, 494 

Arrianus, Flavius, biographer of 
Alexander, 160 (foot-note) 

Artabazus, joins the Greek mer- 
cenaries, 378 ; attached to 
Alexander's staff, 384 ; defeats 
the Bactrians for Alexander, 

394 . . 

Artemisia, queen of Caria, 244 

Askania, Lake, 256 
Asterabad, Alexander at, 385 
Athens, condition at time of 
Alexander's birth, 3 ; after 
peace of Philocrates, 65 ff.; 
begins a two years' war with 
Philip, 67 ff.; after Ch^eronea, 



5 o8 



Index. 



Athens — Continued. 

70 ff.; embassy to Philip, 71 ; 
treaty after Chaeronea, 72 ; 
plain of, 85 ; race and char- 
acter of the people of, 86 ; 
government, \\$ff.; political 
history after Peloponnesian 
war, 122 ff.; peace her best 
policy, 127 ff.; cost of living 
in, 129 ; citizenship as a means 
for livelihood, 134 ff.; slave- 
employment in, 135 ff.; em- 
pire founded on good-will, 137; 
summary of events, 404-355 
B.C., 138 ff.; alliance with 
Thebes, 146 ff. ; hears of 
Philip's death, 153; proclaims 
Pausanias a public benefactor, 
153 ; sues for mercy from 
Alexander, 155 ; recognises 
Alexander's leadership, 156 ; 
assists Thebes in revolt against 
Alexander, 171 ; on the news 
of Thebes's destruction, 177 ; 
sends an embassy to Alexan- 
der, 177 ; terms with Alexan- 
der, 178 ff. ; receives gifts 
from booty at Granicus, 224 ; 
embassy to Alexander at Gor- 
dium, 224 ; cost of fleet, 236 ; 
protests against Alexander's 
fleet at the Hellespont, 264 ; 
population, 338 ; embassy to 
Alexander at Tyre, 355 

Atossa, the queen of Darius, 201 

Attalus, at wedding of Philip 
and Cleopatra, 75 ; insults 
Pausanias, 78 ; on the news of 
Philip's death, \$off.; death, 
151 

Attalus, Macedonian infantry 
commander, 464 

Autophradates, Persian admiral 
at Mitylene, 263 ; submits to 
Alexander, 384 



B 



Babylon, captured by Cyrus, 188; 
revolts of, 190 ; tribute to 



Persia, 197, 199 ; description 
of, 273 ; Alexander at, 369 

Babylonian religion, the old, 205 

Bactra, Bessus's capital, 386 

Bactria, Alexander in, 394^". 

Bagistanes, a Persian deserter, 
brings news that Darius is in 
chains, 377 

Balacer, commander of the Greek 
allies, 258 

Barsine, intercourse with Alex- 
ander, 300 ; death, 494 

Battering-ram, the, type used by 
Alexander, 239 

Bessus, satrap of Bactria, advises 
Darius to withdraw to Bactria, 
375 ; puts Darius in chains, 
377 ; assumes supreme com- 
mand, 378 ; murders Darius, 
379 ; continues to withstand 
Alexander, 386 ; captured by 
Alexander and put to death, 
395 

Borer, the, type used by Alex- 
ander, 239 

Boule, the Athenian, lib ff. 

Bucephala, founded by Alexan- 
der, 449 

Bucephalus, the taming of, 26^". , 
death, 446 

Byblus, surrenders to Alexan 
der, 306 

Byzantium, besieged by Philip 
64, 67 ; in league with Athens 
68 ; alliance reestablished wit] 
the anti-Macedonian party, 
146 ; threatened by Philip, 
146 



Calas, appointed governor of 

Phrygia, 230 
Calippus, fined for bribery, 448 
Callisthenes, nephew of Aristo- 
tle, 38 ; character and relations 
with Alexander, 409 ; speeches 
in praise and blame of the 
Macedonians, 410 ; refuses 
to prostrate himself before 



Index. 



509 



Callisthenes — Continued. 

Alexander, 411 ; imprison- 
ment and death, 411 

Callisthenes, the Athenian, per- 
son demanded by Alexander, 
178 

Cambyses, conquests, death, 189; 
kills the Apis, 334 

Canopus, the river, 336 

Cappadocia, tribute to Persia, 
199 

Caria, submits to Alexander, 243 

Carmania, Alexander in, 467 

Carthage, untouched by Persia, 
189 ; a Tyrian colony, 308 ; 
fails to help Tyre, 317 ; re- 
mains out of Alexander's no- 
tice, 346 

Caspian Gates, the, Persian fron- 
tier, 373 ; passed by Darius, 
377 ; passed by Alexander, 

377 

Caspian Sea, the, Alexander at, 
383/". 

Cassander, refounds Thebes, 176; 
orders death of Roxane, 494 ; 
becomes ruler of Macedonia 
and Greece, 494 

Catapult, the, type used by Al- 
exander, 240 

Celaenae, Alexander at, 257 

Celts, catechised by Alexander, 
164 

Chaeronea, the battle of, 69, 148 

Chalcis, forms a league with 
Athens, 67 ; occupied by a 
Macedonian garrison, 74 

Chalybon, tribute to Persia, 199 

Charias, engineer with Alex- 
ander, 238 

Charidemus, sends news of Phil- 
ip's death to Demosthenes, 
153 ; person demanded by Al- 
exander, 178 ; at the council of 
Darius III., 270; put to death, 
272 

Chersonese, the, ally of Athens, 
67 

Chios, alliance reestablished with 
the anti- Macedonian party, 



146 ; betrayed to Memnon, 
261 ; the democracy in power, 

344 

Choaspes, the, Alexander on, 
426 

Chcerilus, at the court of Arche- 
laus, 16 

Christianity, an expression of Al- 
exander's world, 499 

Cilicia, tribute to Persia, 199 ; 
Alexander in, 275 ; its topo- 
graphy, 277 

Clazomense, welcomes Alexan- 
der, 234 

Cleander, sent to Peloponnesus, 
249 ; arrives at Sidon with 
mercenaries, 249, 315 

Cleisthenes, reforms of, 191 

Cleon, his imperial policy, 65 ; 
an Athenian leader, 120, 125 ; 
opposed by Nicias, 133 

Cleopatra, marriage with Philip, 
75, 150 ; commits suicide, 
158 

Cleophon, a popular leader in 
the fifth century, 134 

Climax, Mt., stories of Alexan- 
der's passage of, 253 

Clitarchus, biographer of Alex- 
ander, 161 (foot-note) 

Clitus, brother of Lanice and 
friend of Alexander, 20 ; saves 
Alexander's life at Granicus, 
221 ; receives partial command 
of the companion cavalry, 393 ; 
murder of, 403 ff. 

Ccenus, sent to Macedonia, 248 ; 
relation to Parmenion, 38S ; at 
the torture of Philotas, 392 ; 
commander of Alexander's hop- 
lite brigade, 429 ; at the battle 
of the Hydaspes, 442 ; at the 
Hypasis, 454 

Colchis, special tribute to Per- 
sia, 198^". 

Colonies, founded by Alexander, 
394, 400 

Corcyra, joins Athens, 68 

Corinth, joins Athens, 68 ; occu- 
pied by a Macedonian garrison, 



5io 



Index. 



Corinth — Continued. 

74 ; a centre of international- 
ism, 123; National Council at, 
156 ; population, 338 

Cos, surrenders to a Macedonian 
fleet, 344 

Craterus, called P hilobasileus by 
Alexander, 52 ; at the torture 
of Philotas, 392 ; defeats Spit- 
amenes, 402 ; at the battle of 
the Hydaspes, 437 ; super- 
vises the building of Nicaea 
and Bucephala, 449 ; on the 
march down the Indus, 456 ; 
leads one third of the army 
from India by a northern 
route, 464 ; joins Alexander 
in Carmania, 467 ; marries a 
niece of Darius, 476 ; returns 
to Macedonia, 485 ; regent 
after Alexander's death, 493 

Crates, engineer with Alexander, 
238 

Crete, made an anti-Macedonian 
stronghold, 345 

Croesus, rebuked by Solon, 182 ; 
conquered by Cyrus, 188 

Ctesias of Croton, writer on In- 
dia, 418 

Curtius Rufus, biographer of 
Alexander, 161 (foot-note) 

Cyrene, western limit of Alex- 
ander's conquests, 347 

Cyrus, conquests, 188 ; charac- 
ter, 188 



Damascus, captured by Parme- 
nion, 306 

Darius III. (Codomannus), tries 
to bribe Greek states to revolt 
from Alexander, 167 ; letter 
from Alexander after Issus, 
168 ; first plans against Alex- 
ander, 268; council after Mem- 
non's death, 270 ; puts Chari- 
demus to death, 272 ; marshals 
his army, 272 ; before Issus, 
280 ; at Issus, see Issus ; em- 



bassy to Alexander after Issus, 
304 ; second embassy to Alex- 
ander, 324 ; at Gaugamela, see 
Gaugamela ; at Ecbatana, 373 ; 
flight from Ecbatana, 374 ; 
put in chains by Bessus, 377 ; 
murdered by Bessus, 379 ; 
burial at Persepolis, 381 

Darius the Great (Hystaspes) 
slays the Pseudo-Smerdis, 190 
organiser of Persia, 190 ff. 
events in Greece during hi 
reign, 191 ; his reign the tun 
between two world - epochs 
192 ; makes Susa his capital 
199 ; builds Persepolis, 199 
a follower of the Ahura Mazd; 
cult, 201 ; death, 206 

Datames, Persian naval com 
mander, 295 

Delian Confederacy, the, 113 

Delos, retained by Athens, 72 

Demades, captive at Chseronea 
71 ; member of Athenian em 
bassy to Philip, 72 ; advise 
an embassy to Alexander af 
ter the destruction of Thebes 
177 ; proposes a compromis 
with Alexander, 179 

Demaratus, reconciles Alexande 
and Philip, 76 

Demetrius, a Macedonian com 
mander, 442 

Demetrius Poliorcetes, 238 

Demon the Athenian, person de 
manded by Alexander, 178 

Demosthenes, age at birth of 
Alexander, 3 ; Third Philip- 
pic, 13, 67 ; champion of the 
anti-Macedonian party, 66 ff., 
125, 126 ; Second Philippic, 
66 ; On the Chersonese, 67 ; 
Lord of the Treasury at Ath- 
ens, 120 ; leader of envoys 
sent to Philip, 142 ; charac- 
ter and policy, 142 ; On the. 
Peace, 143 ; in the role of agi- 
tator, 146 ; effects an alliance 
with Thebes, 146 ff. ; letter 
to Parmenion, 151 ; speech on 



Index. 



5i 



Demosthenes — Continued. 
news of Philip's death, 153 ; 
declares Alexander dead, 166 ; 
accepts money from Darius, 
168 ; relations with Harpalus, 
169, 471 ; correspondence with 
the Persian satrap of Sardes, 
169 ; champion of the regime 
of old Greece, 170 ; person 
demanded by Alexander, 178 ; 
predictions before Issus, 281 ; 
On I he Crown, 447, 496 

Hades, engineer with Alexan- 
der, 238 

>ialects, diversity of Greek, 86 

ff- 

>imnus, plots against Alexander, 

391 

)inocrates, architect of Alexan- 
dria, 342 

)iodorus Siculus, biographer of 
Alexander, 161 (foot-note) 

Jiogenes, colloquy with Alexan- 
der, 53, 157 

)iogenes, made tyrant of Mity- 
lene, 263 

)iopeithes, in the Chersonese, 

67 

Hophantes, advocates slave-em- 
ployment at Athens, 136 
Motimus the Athenian, person 
demanded by Alexander, 178 
Drangiana, Alexander in, 3^"] ff. 
Drapsaca in Bactria, Alexander 
at, 394 



Eastern Question, the, a monu- 
ment from Alexander's time, 
183 

Ecbatana, seat of Median Em- 
pire, 187 ; royal summer resi- 
dence of Persia, 200 ; Darius 
at, 373 ; Alexander at, 373 ff. 

Ecclesia, the Athenian, 116 ff. 

Egypt, conquered by Cambyses, 
189 ; tribute to Persia, 197, 
199 ; its peculiar civilisation, 



329 ; Alexander in, 332 ff. ; a 
commercial centre, 358 

Elis, joins Philip, 66 ; throws off 
Macedonian authority, 153 

Epaminondas, military leader, 
17 ; death, 139 

Ephesus, location and character, 
231 ; submits to Alexander, 
232/". 

Ephialtes the Athenian, person 
demanded by Alexander, 178 

Epidamnus, slave -employment 
in, 135 . 

Epirus, joins Philip, 66 

Eretria, under Philip's influence, 
66 

Erigyius, commander of Alexan- 
der's mercenary cavalry, 377 

Eubcea, under Philip's influence, 
66 ; joins Athens, 68 ; its cities 
united in an anti-Macedonian 
league, 146 

Eubulus, Lord of the Treasury 
at Athens, 120; leader of Ma- 
cedonian party, 125, 126 ; 
policy as treasurer of the dis- 
tribution fund, 131 ff. ; his- 
t o r i c a 1 connections of his 
policy, 133 

Eumenes, marriage at Susa, 477 

Euphrates, the, crossed by Alex- 
ander, 356 

Euripides, death, 16 ; Aristotle's 
opinion of, 43 



Ferghana, chiefs of the tribes 
about the, descended from 
Alexander, 402 



Ganges, the, 450 

Gaugamela, the battle of, loca- 
tion, 357 ; Darius encamped 
at, 357 ; Alexander fords the 
Tigris, 359 ; Darius's army at, 
360 ; Darius's position at, 361 ; 
Alexander's approach, 361 ; 



5^ 



Index. 



Gauagmela — Continued. 

Macedonian army at, 365 ; Al- 
exander's attack, 365 ; the fly- 
ing wedge, 366; Darius's 
flight, 367 ; the pursuit to Ar- 
bela, 368 

Gaumata, the Pseudo-Smerdis, 
usurps the Persian throne, 189 

Gaza, siege-engines at, 48 ; taken 
by Alexander, 325 ff. 

Gedrosian coast, the, Alexan- 
der's march along, 465 ff. 

Getae, defeated by Alexander, 
162 

Glaucippus, proposal to Alex- 
ander at Miletus, 237 

Glaukanikoi submit to Alexan- 
der, 449 

Gordian knot, the story of the, 
258/: 

Gordium, Alexander at, 224, 
258 

Granicus, the battle of the, Per- 
sian position at, 217 ; Alexan- 
der's attack, 219 ; the Persian 
rout, 221 ; the dead, 222 ; the 
wounded, 223 ; the booty, 224 ; 
significance, 229 ; ratio of lost, 
302 

Greece, areas, 82 ; distances be- 
tween chief cities, 83 ; geo- 
graphy, 84 ff. ; effect of to- 
pography, 85 ; particularism 
of its communities, 86 ; dia- 
lects, 86 ff. ; manners and 
customs, 88 ff. ; educational 
standards, 90 ; weights and 
measures, 90 ; calendar, 91 ; 
religious usages, 92 ff.; com- 
mercial intercourse between 
cantons, 94 ff. ; travel, 96 ; 
theory of the state, 98 ff. ; citi- 
zenship, 100 ; religious charac- 
ter of the state, 101 ; relation 
of the individual to the state, 
102 ff. ; state intrusion upon 
private right, 105 ff. ; legal 
status of the individual, 107 ; 
smallness a principle of the 
states, 108 ; political organisa- 



tion unsuited to an empire, 
no; treaties between states, 
in ; the Amphictyonies, 112 ; 
the Delian Confederacy, 113 ; 
obstacles to the creation of 
an imperial state, 114 ff.; 
the Athenian state, 115 ff. ; 
political history after Pelo- 
ponnesian war, 122 ff. ; 
slave-employment in, 135 ff. ; 
summary of events, 404-355 
B.C., 138 ff. ; complete disor- 
ganisation, 141 ; submits to 
Alexander after destruction of 
Thebes, 177 ; its civilisation 
contrasted with the Persian, 
180 ff. ; essential character- 
istics of the people, 183 ff. ; 
events during reign of Darius 
the Great, x 9 i , indifference 
to Alexander's campaign, 210, 
267, 269 ; events during Alex- 
ander's campaign in Asia, 447 ; 
effect of Alexander's return to 
Susa, 486 ; before and after 
Alexander, 496 ff. 
Greeks of Italy, the, 346 
Grote, on Alexander, 495 



H 



Hadrian, on Alexandria, 339 
Halicarnassus, resists Alexander, 
243 ff.; besieged by Alexan- 
der, 244^"./ fired by Memnon, 
246 ; taken by Alexander, 247 ; 
Macedonian loss in night sortie 
at, 302 
Halonnesus, the affair of the, 68 
Harpalus, sends books to Alex- 
ander, 43 ; misuse of funds, 
470; flight to Greece, 471 
Hecatseus, despatched to seize 

Attalus, 151 
Hegelochus, sent to collect a 
fleet, 264 ; recaptures Tene- 
dos, 296 ; brings news of the 
dispersion of the Persian fleet, 
344 



Index. 



513 



Hegesippus, speech against 
Philip, 68 ; leader of anti- 
Macedonian party, 125 

Hegesistratus, Persian com- 
mander of Miletus, 234 

Heliopolis, Alexander at, 333 

Hellenic Congress at Corinth, 

Toff- . r 

Hellenism, a critical time for, 
191 ; Alexander champion of, 
225 

Helots, the, position at Sparta, 
136 

Hephaestion, called Philalexan- 
dros by Alexander, 52; honours 
the tomb of Patroclus, 215 ; 
visits Darius's family after Is- 
sus, 300 ; at the torture of 
rhiioten, 39c ; receives par- 
tial command of the com- 
panion cavalry, 393 ; in 
command of part of the army 
in India, 426 ; on the march 
down the Indus, 456 ; goes up 
the Persian coast with the 
main army, 470 ; marries Dry- 
petis, 476 ; receives a golden 
crown for bravery, 479 ; death 
at Ecbatana, 488 

Heracles, son of Barsine, claim- 
ant for throne, 492 ; death, 
494 

Hermocrates, discussion with 
Pausanias, 78 

Hermolaus forms a conspiracy 
against Alexander's life, 411 

Herodotus, history of the con- 
flict between Greece and Per- 
sia, 182 ff. 

Hetairoi, the, 215 

Hindoo Gymnosophists, ques- 
tioned by Alexander, 53 

Hippocrates, at court of Perdic- 
cas II., 16 

Homer, Alexander's delight in, 

43/: 

Hydaspes, the battle of the, 29, 

434 ff. ; Porus's army, 436 ; 

Alexander delays attack, 436 ; 

Alexander fords the river, 

33 



43S ; Porus's order of battle, 
441 ; Alexander's attack, 441: ; 
Porus's surrender, 444 ; the 
slain, 446 ; Alexander's return 
to, 454 

Hypasis, the, Alexander at, 450, 
453 

Hypaspists, 216 

Hyperides, leader of anti-Mace- 
donian party, 125 ; person de- 
manded by Alexander, 178 

Hyraotis, Alexander conveyed 
down the, 460 

Hyrcania, Alexander in, 383 

I 

Idrieus, king of Caria, 244 
Illyria, conquered by Philip, 140; 

revolt of, 345 
Imbros, retained by Athens, 72 
India, Alexander in, 416 ff. ; 
the peoples, languages, re- 
ligions, 420 
Indus, the voyage down the, 

449. 463 
Ipsus, battle of, results, 494 
Isocrates, On the Peace, 3, 132 ; 
conception of rhetoric, 51 ; 
address to Philip, 144 
Issus, battle of, arrival of Da- 
rius, 282 ; Alexander's coun- 
cil before, 283 ; Alexander's 
preparations for, 285 ; Da- 
rius's position at, 285 ff. ; the 
plain of, 286 ; Alexander's po- 
sition at, 286^". / Alexander's 
advance, 287 ; Alexander's at- 
tack, 2S9 ; the engagement, 
290 ; Darius's flight, 291, 293 ; 
Persian rout, 292 ; Alexan- 
der's pursuit, 292 ; results, 
293 ; the booty, 298 ; Alexan- 
der's treatment of Darius's 
family, 299 ; Macedonian loss 
at, 301 ; Persian loss at, 303 ; 
Alexander wounded, 304; 
Alexander's letter to Darius 
after, 168 
Iturrean tribes of Syria, submit to 
Alexander, 314 



5H 



Index. 



Jaxartes, the, identified with the 
Don, 384 ; Alexander at, 398 
ff. ; the limit of Alexander's 
conquests, 400 

Justinus, biographer of Alexan- 
der, 161 (foot-note) 



K 



Kathaioi, the, oppose Alexan- 
der, 450 



Lampsacus, submits to Alexan- 
der, 217 
Lanice, nurse to Alexander, 20 
Laurion, silver mines in, 135 
Lechseum, ratio of loss at the 

battle of, 303 
Lemnos, retained by Athens, 72 
Leonidas, Alexander's tutor, 21 

ff- • „ 

Leonnatus, a " companion, car- 
ries message to Darius's fam- 
ily, 299 ; in an attack on a city 
of the Mallians, 4&] ff. ; re- 
ceives a golden crown for 
bravery, 479 ; regent after 
Alexander's death, 493 
Lesbos, surrenders to Memnon, 
262 ; submits to Macedonian 
rule, 344 
Leucas, joins Athens, 68 
Leuctra, victory of Thebes at, 
139 ; ratio of loss at the battle 

of, 303 

Loss in battles, ancient and mod- 
ern, ratio of, 302 

Lycia, Alexander in, 248 ff. ; 
the people, language, civilisa- 
tion, 249 

Lycurgus, Lord of the Treasury 
at Athens, 120 ; leader 6f anti- 
Macedonian party, 125 ; treas- 
urer of the distribution fund, 
131 ; person demanded by Al- 
exander, 178 

Lyncestian line, the, connected 



with Philip's death, 79 ; fur- 
nishes a candidate for the 
throne, 150 ; two opponents 
of Alexander put to death, 
150 

Lysander, the Spartan king, re- 
sponse of the Delphic Pythia 
to, 349 

Lysimachus, Alexander's peda- 
gogue, 22 ; in Syria, 24 ff. ; 
likens Alexander to Achilles, 
44 

Lysimachus, becomes ruler of 
Thrace and Asia Minor, 494 ; 
his kingdom swept away by 
the Celts, 495 

Lysippus, makes statues of the 
"companions" who fell at 
Granicus, 223 ; portrays 4lex- 

andcr, 228 



M 



Macedonia, the government, peo- 
ple, language, 9 ff. ; royal 
family, 14 ; espousal of Hel- 
lenic interests, 15 ff. ; intro- 
duction of Greek culture, 16 ; 
ambition, 18 ; influence among 
Greek cities, 66 ff. 

Macedonian Party, situation pre- 
cedent to, 125; "the peace 
party," 126 ; its conservative 
point of view, 127 ; developed 
from conservative elements, 
137 ; formative policy, 143 

Magi, the, Median priests, 202 

Magnesia, submits to Alexander, 

234 

Mallians, the, subdued by Alex- 
ander, 456 ff. 

Mantinea, the battle of, end of 
preeminence of Thebes, 139 

Maracanda, Alexander at, 398 

Mareotis Lake, Alexander at, 

336 
Masakes, Persian satrap at, 332 
Massaga, taken by Alexander, 

427 rr, . 

Mausolus, king of Cana, 244 



Index. 



SO 



Mazaeus, at Gaugamela, 367 
Media, tribute to Persia, 197, 

199 
Medius the Thessalian, during 

Alexander's last illness, 489, 

490 
Megalopolis, ratio of loss at the 

battle of, 303 ; besieged by 

Sparta, 346 
Megara, relations with Philip, 

66, 67 ; joins Athens, 68 ; the 

people of, 86 
Megasthenes, writer of the third 

century B.C., 451 
Mekran, Alexander's march 

through the, 466 
Melanippides at court of Perdic- 

cas II., 16 
Meleager, sent to Macedonia, 

248 ; at tile battle of the Ply. 

daspes, 438 ; in the council 
after Alexander's death, 492 

Memnon, at Granicus, 217 ; 
withdrawal to Halicarnassus, 
233 ; commander of Persians 
at Halicarnassus, 243 ; plans 
to cut Alexander off from Eu- 
rope, 260 ; wins over Chios 
and Lesbos, 261, 262 ; death 
at Mitylene, 263 ; his plans 
abandoned by Darius, 264 

Memphis, captured by Camby- 
ses, 189; Alexander at, 333 
ff. ; Alexander receives a 
Greek delegation at, 354 

Menecles the Peloponnesian, 
teaches Alexander mathemat- 
ics, 48 

Mercenaries, employment in 
Greece and Persia, 211 

Messene, under Philip's influ- 
ence, 66, 67 

Metics, status at Athens, 99 ; 
tax upon, 128 

Mieza, seat of Aristotle's school, 
34 

Miletus, rival of Ephesus, 232 ; 
opposes Alexander, 234 ff.; 
besieged by Alexander, 236 ff. ; 
augury before the battle of, 



237 ; Alexander's answer to 

Glaucippus at, 237; capture 

of, 240 ; the Persian fleet at, 

241 ; Alexander disbands his 

fleet, 242 
Mithra cult, the, 205 
Mithridates, the son-in-law of 

Darius, death at Granicus, 221 
Mitylene, besieged by Memnon, 

262 ; capitulates to Pharnaba- 

zus, 263 ; recaptured from the 

Persians, 344 
Mnoitai, the, public serfs in 

Crete, 136 
Mcerocles the Athenian, person 

demanded by Alexander, 178 
Musaeum, the, at Alexandria, 

340 
Myndus, Alexander's attack 

upon, 244 



N 



Nabarzanes, commander of the 
Persian cavalry, 374 

National Council at Corinth. 
156 

Naucratis, a Greek settlement in 
Egypt, 337 

Nearchus, studies in natural his- 
tory, 49 ; made admiral of 
Alexander's fleet in India, 
455 ; left with fleet at the 
mouth of the Indus, 465 ; sails 
to the Persian Gulf, 468 ff.; 
marriage at Susa, 477 ; re- 
ceives a golden crown for 
bravery, 479 ; at Alexander's 
last illness, 490 

Neoptolemus, father of Olym- 
pias, 4 

Neoptolemus, a Lyncestian 
prince, death at Halicarnassus, 
245 

Nicaea, founded by Alexander, 
.446, 449 

Nicanor, the Macedonian ad- 
miral, at Miletus, 240 

Nicanor, son of Parmenion, com- 
mander of the hypaspists, 388 



5i6 



Index. 



Nicanor, ambassador from Alex- 
ander to the Olympic festival, 
4S6 

Nicomachus, plots against Alex- 
ander, 391 

Niebuhr, on Alexander, 495 



Olympias, mother of Alexander, 
her character, 4 ff.; quarrel 
with Philip, 75 ; goes to Epi- 
rus, 76 ; returns from Epirus, 
77 ; connected with Philip's 
death, 79 ; causes the murder 
of Cleopatra's child, 158 ; re- 
ceives gifts from booty at 
Granicus, 224 ; influence on 
Alexander's character, 351 ; 
makes trouble in Macedonia, 
470 ; orders death of Arrhi- 
dseus, 494 ; death, 494 

Olynthus, fall of, 142 

Onesicritus, pilot of Alexander's 
royal galley in India, 455 ; on 
the voyage to the Persian Gulf, 
469 ; receives a golden crown 
for bravery, 479 

Oreus, under Philip's influence, 
66 

Oropus, added to Attica, 72 

Othontopates, king of Caria, 
244 ; defeated at Halicarnas- 
sus, 278 

Oxus, Alexander at the, 394 

Oxyartes, father of Roxane, sub- 
mits to Alexander, 412 



Pactolus, gold mines of, 187 
P3eonians, conquered by Philip, 

140 
Pamphylia, the people and lan- 
guage, 250 ; Alexander in, 

254 
Paneum, the, at Alexandria, 341 
Parsetacene, number of lost in 

the battle of the, 302 
Paralos, the sacred Athenian 

trireme, 355 



Parmenion, at time of Philip's 
death, 150, 151 ; in Asia Mi- 
nor, 159; the crossing at Ses- 
tus, 213 ; at Granicus, 218 ; 
sent to occupy Dascylium, 230; 
at Miletus, 236 ; augury at 
Miletus, 237 ; in command in 
winter quarters in Phrygia, 
249 ; sends word to Alexander 
of the Lyncestian plot, 251 ; 
at Gordium, 258 ; warns Alex- 
ander against the physician 
Philip, 276; occupies the 
Amanus Mountains, 277 ; at 
Issus, 287 ; occupies Damas- 
cus, 304 ; advises Alexander 
to accept Darius's terms, 324 ; 
advises reconnoitre at Gauga- 
mela, 362 ; hard pressed at 
rirtugamcict, 307 ; opposes the 
burning of the palace at Per- 
sepolis, 372 ; his services re- 
viewed, 387 ; implicated by 
Philotas in his conspiracy, 
392 ; put to death, 393 

Parthia, Alexander in, 3&S ff. 

Pasargadae, treasure in, 199; oc- 
cupied by Alexander, 370 ; 
Alexander's return to, 470 

Patala, Alexander at, 464 

Patroclus, his tomb honoured by 
Hephaestion, 215 

Patron, the Phocian, leader of 
Darius's Greek mercenaries, 

377 
Pausanias, murders Philip, 78 ; 

proclaimed a public benefactor 

at Athens, 153 
Peithon, made satrap of a region 

on the Indus, 464 
Pelion, in Illyria, burned by 

Alexander, 165 
Pella, birthplace of Alexander, 8 
Pelusium welcomes Alexander, 

332 
Perdiccas, slays murderer of 

Philip, 79 ; precipitates attack 

on Thebes, 173 ; refuses lands 

assigned him by Alexander, 

209; in command of part of 



Judex. 



Perdiccas — Continued. 

Alexander's army in India, 426; 
marriage at Susa, 477 ; regent 
after Alexander's death, 493 ; 
guardian of Roxane's son, 494; 
death, 494 

Perdiccas II., king of Macedo- 
nia, 16 

Perdiccas III., king of Macedo- 
nia, 17 

Pericles, imperial policy, 65 ; 
an Athenian boss, 120 

Perinthus, besieged by Philip, 
67 

Persepolis, built by Darius the 
Great, 199 ; treasure in, 199 ; 
occupied by Alexander, 370 ; 
Alexander's return to, 470 

Persia, contributes to Athenian 
league, 68 ; i-L-iaintains balance 
of weakness among Greek 
states, 139; relations to Greece, 
143; begins operations to 
check Alexander, 167; its civil- 
isation contrasted with the 
Greek, 180 ff.; wars under 
Darius and Xerxes, 182 ; the 
people, 187 ; early history, 188 

ff. 
Persian Empire, the, origin of, 

187 ; organised by Darius the 

Great, 190 ff. ; resources and 

taxes, 197 ; special taxes in, 

198; area and population, 199; 

army maintenance, 199 ; royal 

residences in, 199 ; the royal 

court, 200 ; the wives of the 

King, 201 ; kings from Darius 

the Great to Darius Codoman- 

nus, 206 

Persian espionage, 194 

Persian Gulf, the, explored by 
Alexander's fleet, 470 

Persian military roads, 195; 
the road from Sardis to Susa, 
196 ; make Alexander's em- 
pire possible, 197 

Persian satraps, powers of, 193 

Peucestas, in an attack on a city 
of the Mallians, 457 ff.; re- 



ceives a golden crown for brav- 
ery, 479 

Pezetairoi, 216 

Phalanx, the Macedonian, 216 

Phaleas of Chalcedon, demands 
likeness of property for all cit- 
izens, 136 

Pharnabazus, takes Mitylene, 
263; takes Tenedos, 264 ; goes 
to head off revolt at Chios, 298; 
a fugitive, 344 

Pharos, Alexander's first visit to, 
45 ; the island of, 341 ; the 
lighthouse at, 342 

Pheidippides, courier before bat- 
tle of Marathon, 83 

Philip, his two great achieve- 
ments, 7 ; hostage at Thebes, 
17 ; ascends the throne, 19 ; 
the attack on Byzantium, 64 ; 
the peace of Philocrates, 65 ; 
made member of Amphicty- 
onic Council, 65; presides over 
Pythian games, 65; ends 
Sacred War, 65; occupies 
Thrace, 66 ; begins two years' 
war with Athens, 67 ff.; be- 
sieges Perinthus and Byzan- 
tium, 67 ; receives embassy 
from Athens, 71 ; treaty with 
Athens after Chaeronea, 72 ; 
Hellenic Congress at Corinth 
and its results, 73 ff. ; com- 
mander in chief of Hellenic 
league, 74 ; quarrel with Alex- 
ander and Olympias, 74 ff.; 
marries Cleopatra, 75 ; ar- 
ranges marriage between 
Alexander's sister and King of 
Epirus, 77 ; murdered, 7&ff.; 
summary of events, 404-355 
B. c. , 138 ff. ; involved i n 
affairs of central Greece, 141 ; 
defender of Delphi, 141 ; his 
opportunity in Greece, 144 ; 
concessions to Athens, 145 ; 
desires hegemony, not subju- 
gation, 145; movement against 
Byzantium, 146; enters central 
Greece at the head of an army, 



5i8 



Index. 



Philip — Continued. 

147 ; master of Greece, 148 ; 
wounded by the Triballi, 159 

Philip, commander on the march 
down the Indus, 456 

Philip the Acharnanian, physi- 
cian with Alexander at Tarsus, 
276 

Philistus, historian of Sicily, 43 

Philocrates, the peace of, 65 

Philonicus, sells Bucephalus to 
Philip, 26 

Philonides, courier of Alexander, 
83 (foot-note) 

Philotas, son of Parmenion, in- 
volved in a conspiracy against 
Alexander, 387 ; previous criti- 
cism of Alexander, 391 ; put 
on trial, 391 ; convicted and 
put to death, 392 

Philoxenus, in Aristotle's Poli- 
tics, 43 

Phocion, member of Athenian 
embassy to Philip, 72 ; leader 
of Macedonian party, 125 ; 
approves of Eubulus, 131 ; 
counsels against war, 147 ; ad- 
vises submission to Alexander's 
demand for the ten politicians, 
178 ; persuades Alexander to 
moderate his terms, 179 

Phocis, occupied by Philip, 65 

Phrada, Alexander at, 387 

Phrataphernes, submits to Alex- 
ander, 384 

Phrygia, Alexander in, 247, 256 

ff- 

Pindar, celebrates Alexander's 
victories, 15 ; the one great 
writer of Thebes, 172 ; his 
house spared at destruction of 
Thebes, 174 

Pisidia, Alexander in, 253 ff. 

Pixodarus, brother of Ada, queen 
of Caria, 244 

Plutarch, biographer of Alex- 
ander, 160 (foot-note) 

Polyeuctus the Athenian, per- 
son demanded by Alexander, 
178 



Polystratus, at death of Darius, 
380 

Porus, the battle with ; see Hy- 
daspes ; confirmed in his old 
authority, 449 

Posidonius, engineer with Alex- 
ander, 238 

Potidsea, seized by Philip, 140 

Priapus, submits to Alexander, 
217 

Proteas, son of Lanice and as- 
sociate of Alexander, 20 

Proteas, captures Persian ships 
at Siphnus, 265 

Protesilaus, tomb of, visited by 
Alexander, 214 

Prytaneum, the daily meal at the, 
136 

Prytany, the Athenian, 118 

Psammetichus I_ employ Gictk 
mercenaries, 337 

Ptolemseus, king of Macedonia, 

17 

Ptolemy, son of Seleucus, sent 
to Macedonia, 248 ; killed at 
Issus, 304 

Ptolemy Soter, first ruler of 
Alexandria, 337 ; builder of 
the lighthouse at Pharos, 342 ; 
institutes the Alexander cult, 
354 ; at the murder of Clitus, 
406 ; at the siege on the In- 
dus, 429 ; marriage at Susa, 
477 ; in the council after Alex- 
ander's death, 492 ; becomes 
ruler of Egypt, 494 

Pydna, seized by Philip, 140 

Pyrgoteles, portrays Alexander, 
228 

Pythian games, presided over by 
Philip, 65 



R 



Rhagae, Alexander at, 377 
Rhodes, alliance reestablished 
with anti-Macedonian party, 
146 ; beginning of her com- 
mercial career, 448 



Index. 



5<9 



Roxane, marriage with Alex- 
ander, 412 ; birth of a son, 
413 ; death, 413, 494 



S 



Sacred War, begun, 141 ; con- 
tinued, 142 ; ended by Philip, 

65 
Sagalassus, Alexander at, 256 
Samos, retained by Athens, 72 
Sangala, siege of, 302 ; captured 

by Alexander, 450 
Sardis, captured by Cyrus, 188 ; 

submits to Alexander, 230 ; 

government of Lydia under 

Alexander, 231 
Sarissophors, 216 
Satibarzanes, satrap at Susia, 

srrbrrvitfi to Alexander, 386 
Sattagydae, the satrapy of the, 

tribute to Persia, 197 
Satyrus, Life of Philip, 75 
Scythians, defeated by Alex- 
ander, 399 
Seleucus, marriage at Susa, 477 ; 

becomes ruler of Syria and 
m Babylonia, 494 
Selge, Alexander's treaty with, 

255 

Sema, the, at Alexandria, 341 

Serapeum, the, at Memphis, 334 

Sestos, expedition to, 182 

Sidon, surrenders to Alexander, 
307 ; Alexander collects a fleet 
at, 313; population, 338 

Siege-engines, use of by the 
Greeks, 238 

Siege-tower, the, type used by 
Alexander, 239 

Siwah, oasis of, site of temple of 
Jupiter Amnion, 348 

Slaves in Greece, public employ- 
ment, 135 jf.j price and sup- 
ply. 174 

Smerdis, murdered, 190 

Social War, political situation at 
end of, 140 

Socrates declines Archelaus's in- 
vitation, 16 



Solon, rebukes Crcesus, 182 
Sophocles declines Archelaus's 

invitation, 16 
Sparta, refuses to participate in 
compact with Philip, 74 ; plain 
of, 85 ; summary of events, 
404-355 B.C., 138^.; throws 
off Macedonian authority, 153 ; 
refuses to recognise Alexan- 
der's leadership, 156 ; accepts 
money from Darius, 168 ; pop- 
ulation, 338 ; the disaffection 
of, 345 ; submits to Antipater, 
346 ; besieges Megalopolis, 
346 
Spitamenes, revolt of, 399 ; de- 
feated by Craterus, 402 ; de- 
feated by Alexander, 402 ; put 
to death, 403 
Stagira, Aristotle's birthplace, 

33 I rebuilt by Philip, 34 
Stasanor, meets Alexander with 

supplies, 467 
Strategoi, the Athenian, 119 
Strymon, Alexander subdues 

tribes on the, 64 
Susa, capital of Persia, 1S8 ; 
treasure in, 199 ; capital of 
Persian Empire, 199 ; Alexan- 
der at, 370 ; Alexander's re- 
turn to, 470 ; the five days' 
marriage fete at, 476^". 
Susia, Alexander at, 385 
Syracuse, population, 338 
Syria, tribute to Persia, 197 
Syrphax, leader of the oligarchs 
at Ephesus, 233 ; stoned to 
death by Ephesian mob, 234 



Tarsus, Alexander at, 275 
Taxiles, an Indian rajah, meets 
Alexander, 425; welcomes 
Alexander, 434 ; confirmed in 
his old authority, 449 
Tenedos, yields to Pharnabazus, 
264 ; recaptured by Hegelo- 
chus, 296 ; returns to Macedo- 
nian rule, 344 



520 



Indi 



ex. 



Teos, welcomes Alexander, 234 
Termessus, Alexander at, 255 
r rhapsacus, Alexander crosses 

the Euphrates at, 356 
Thebes, after Chseronea, 70 ; oc- 
cupied by Macedonian garri- 
son, 74 ; the people, 86, 171 
ff. ; summary of events, 404- 
355 B.C., 138 ff.; victory at 
Leuctra, 139 ; alliance with 
Athens, 146 ff. ; recognises 
. Alexander'sleadership,i56; re- 
volt against Alexander, \70ff.; 
location, etc., 171 ff. ; Alex- 
ander encamped before, 172 ; 
captured by Alexander, 173 ; 
destroyed by Alexander and 
inhabitants sold as slaves, 174; 
fate pronounced by a tribunal 
of neighbouring states, 175; be- 
trayal of Greece in Persian 
war, 176 ; refounded by Cas- 
sander, 176; population, 338 
Thermopylae, passed by Philip, 

65 

Thessaly, becomes Philip's ally, 
65 ; joins Alexander, 155 

Tigris, the, crossed by Alexan- 
der, 359 

Timolaus, a Theban leader, slain, 
170 

Timotheus, at court of Archelaus, 
16 

Trade routes between India 
and the Western world in an- 
cient and modern times, 358 

Tralles, submits to Alexander, 

234 
Triballi, the, attitude towards 

Macedonia, 159; defeated by 

Alexander, 162 
Trireme, the, 235 
Trogus Pompeius, biographer of 

Alexander, 161 (foot-note) 
Troy, Alexander at, 214 
Tyre, siege-engines at, 48 ; early 



history, 307 ff.; unwilling to 
admit Alexander, 307 ; Eze- 
kiel's curse upon, 308 ; nomi- 
nal vassal of Persia, 309; 
necessity for its capture, 310 ; 
length of the siege, 311 ; build- 
ing of the mole, 311 ff.; Alex- 
ander collects a fleet, 313 ; ar- 
rival of Cleander, 314; attack 
by Alexander's fleet, 315 ; at- 
tack from the mole, 316 ; at- 
tack by Tyrian fleet, 317 ; 
Alexander's only sea-fight, 
318 ; the capture, 2 2 off.; loss 
at the capture of, 322 ; dis- 
posal of the inhabitants, 323 ; 
population, 338; Alexander 
at, on return from Egypt, 355 

U 

Uxians, the, return Bucepha- 
lus, 28 ; subjugated, 370 



Varuna, identified with Ahura 
Mazda, 203 



Xenophon, On the Revenues, 3 ; 
monograph on the finances of 
the Athenian state, 127 ff. 



Zamolxis cult, the, 162 
Zariaspa, Alexander winters at, 

402 
Zend-Avesta, sacred writings of 

the Ahura Mazda cult, 202 
Zeno, the Stoic, 59 
Zeuxis at court of Archelaus, 16 
Zoroaster, religious reformer. 

189 ; gives form to the Ahura 

Mazda religion, 202, 204 



Heroes of the Nations. 



EDITED BY 



EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A, 

Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 



A Series of biographical studies of the lives and work 
of a number of representative historical characters about 
whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations 
to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in 
many instances, as types of the several National ideals. 
With the life of each typical character will be presented 
a picture of the National conditions surrounding him 
during his career. 

The narratives are the work of writers who are recog- 
nized authorities on their several subjects, and, while 
thoroughly trustworthy as history, will present picturesque 
and dramatic " stories " of the Men and of the events con- 
nected with them. 

To the Life of each " Hero " will be given one duo- 
decimo volume,, handsomely printed in large type, pro- 
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the special requirements of the several subjects. The 
volumes will be sold separately as follows : 

Large 12°, cloth extra $150 

Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top , . . I 75 



HEROES OF THE NATIONS. 



A series of biographical studies of the lives and < 
certain representative historical characters, about wh 
gathered the great traditions of the Nations to which t 
belonged, and who have been accepted, in many instano 
types of the several National ideals. 

The volumes will be sold separately as follows : clot 
$1.50 ; half leather, uncut edges, gilt top, $1.75. 

The following are now ready : 



NELSON. By W. Clark Russell. 
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. By C. 

R. L. Fletcher. 
PERICLES. By Evelyn Abbott. 
THEODORIC THE GOTH. By 

Thomas Hodgkin. 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. By. H. R. 

Fox-Bourne. 
JULIUS CAESAR. By W. Warde 

Fowler. 
WYCLIF. By Lewis Sergeant. 
NAPOLEON. By W. O'Connor Mor- 
ris. 
HENRY OF NAVARRE. By P. F. 

Willert. 
CICERO. By J. L. Strachan-David- 

son. 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Noah 

Brooks. 
PRINCE HENRY (OF PORTUGAL) 

THE NAVIGATOR. By C R. 

Beazley. 
JULIAN THE PHILOSOPHER. 

By Alice Gardner. 
LOUIS XIV. By Arthur Hassall. 
CHARLES XII. By R. Nisbet Bain. 



LORENZO DE' MEDICI. By Ed- 
ward Armstrong. 

JEANNE D'ARC. By Mrs. Oliphant. 

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By 
Washington Irving. 

ROBERT THE BRUCE. By Sir 
Herbert Maxwell. 

HANNIBAL. By w. oxunnor Mor- 
ris. 

ULYSSES S. GRANT. By William 
Conant Church. 

ROBERT E. LEE. By Henry Alex- 
ander White. 

THE CID CAMPEADOR. Bv H. 
Butler Clarke. 

SAL A DIN. By Stanley Lane-Poole. 

BISMARCK. By J. W. Headlam. 

CHARLEMAGNE. By H. W. C. 
Davis. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By 
Benjamin I. Wheeler. 

OLIVER CROMWELL. By Charles 
Firth. 

DANIEL O'CONNELL. By Robert 
Dunlop. 

RICHELIEU. By James B. Perkins. 



Other volumes in preparation are : 

MOLTKE. By Spencer Wilkinson. 

JUDAS MACCABEUS. By Israel 
Abrahams. 

HENRY V. By Charles L. Kings- 
ford. 

SOBIESKI. By F. A. Pollard. 

ALFRED THE TRUTHTELLER. 
By F. York-Powell. 



FREDERICK II. By A. L. Smith. 
MARLBOROUGH. By C. W. C. 

Oman. 
RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED. 

By T. A. Archer. 
WILLIAM THE SILENT. By Ruth 

Putnam. 
JUSTINIAN. By Edward Jenks. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York and London. 



The Story of the Nations. 



Messrs. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS take pleasure in 
announcing that they have in course of publication, in 
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In the story form the current of each national life is 
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philosophical relation to each other as well as to universal 
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It is the plan of the writers of the different volumes to 
enter into the real life of the peoples, and to bring them 
before the reader as they actually lived, labored, and 
struggled — as they studied and wrote, and as they amused 
themselves. In carrying out this plan, the myths, with 
which the history of all lands begins, will not be over- 
looked, though these will be carefully distinguished from 
the actual history, so far as the labors of the accepted 
historical authorities have resulted in definite conclusions. 

The subjects of the different volumes have been planned 
to cover connecting and, as far as possible, consecutive 
epochs or periods, so that the set when completed will 
present in a comprehensive narrative the chief events in 
the great Story of the Nations ; but it is, of course, 
not always practicable to issue the several volumes in 
their chronological order. 



THE STORY OF THE iNATlONS. 

The "Stories" are printed in good readable type, and H 
handsome i2mo form. They are adequately illustrated 
furnished with maps and indexes. Price per vol., cloth, $1.50 
half morocco, gilt top, $1.75. 

The following are now ready : 



GREECE. Prof. Jas. A. Harrison. 
ROME. Arthur Gilman. 
THE JEWS. Prof. James K. Hosmer. 
CHALDEA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
GERMANY. S. Baring-Gould. 
NORWAY. Hjalmar H. Boyesen. 
SPAIN. Rev. E. E. and Susan Hale. 
HUNGARY. Prof. A. Vambery. 
CARTHAGE. Prof. Alfred J. Church. 
THE SARACENS. Arthur Gilman. 
THE MOORS IN SPAIN. Stanley 

Lane-Poole. 
THE NORMANS. Sarah Ornejewett. 
PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin. 
ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. Geo. Raw- 

linson. 
ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. J. 

P. Mahaffy. 
ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley. 
IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless. 
TURKEY. Stanley Lane-Poole. 
MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. 

Z. A. Ragozin. 
MEDIAEVAL FRANCE. Prof. Gus- 

tave Masson. 
HOLLAND. Prof. J. Thorold Rogers. 
MEXICO. Susan Hale. 
PHOENICIA. Geo. Rawlinson. 
THE HANSA TOWNS. Helen Zim- 

mern. 
EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. Alfred J. 

Church. 
THE BARB ARY CORSAIRS. Stan- 
ley Lane-Pool. 
RUSSIA. W. R. Morfill. 
THE JEWS UNDER ROME. W. D. 

Morrison. 
SCOTLAND. John Mackintosh. 
SWITZERLAND. R. Stead and Mrs. 

A. Hug. 
PORTUGAL. H. Morse-Stephens. 
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. C. W. 

C. Oman. 
SICILY. E. A. Freeman 



THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS. 

Duffy. 
POLAND. W. R. Morfill. 
PARTHIA. Geo. Rawlinson. 



Bella 



JAPAN. David Murray. 

THE CHRISTIAN RECOVERY OF 

SPAIN. H. E. Watts. 
AUSTRALASIA. Grevill 

then. 
SOUTHERN AFRICA. Geo. M* 

Theal. 
VENICE. AletheaWiel. 
THE CRUSADES. T. S. Archer and 

C. L. Kingsford. 
VEDIC INDIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
BOHEMIA. C. E. Maurice. 
CANADA. J. G. Bourinot. 
THE BALKAN STATES. William 

Miller. 
BRiTiari RULE IN INDIA. R. W. 

Frazer. 
MODERN FRANCE. Andre LeBon. 
THE BUILDINGOFTHE BRITISH 
EMPIRE. Alfred T. Story. Two 
vols. 
THE FRANKS. Lewis Sergeant. 
THE WEST INDIES. Amos K. 

Fiske. 
THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND IN 
THE 19TH CENTURY. Justin 
McCarthy, M.P. Two vols. 
AUSTRIA, THE HOME OF THE 
HAFSBURG DYNASTY, FROM 
1282 TO THE PRESENT DAY. 
Sidney Whitman. 
CHINA. Robt. K. Douglass. 
MODERN SPAIN. Major Ma:..fl A, 

S. Hume. 
Other volumes in preparation are : 
THE UNITED STATES, i775- l8 9'- 
A. C. McLaughlin, Professor o< 
American History, University of 
Michigan. In two vols. 
BUDDHIST INDIA. Prof. T. W. 

Rhys-Davids. 
MOHAMMEDAN INDIA. 

Lane-Poole. ^ MT w<5 

THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. 

WAfmND&WALL. Owen 

M. Edwards. „„.«« 

THE ITALIAN KINGDOM. 



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